Remember me
by Two Ladies of Quality
Summary: Even in hellish situations, there are things you want to remember
1. Chapter 1

"Let me die. Please, let me die."

It had taken days for Clint to track down the rumors, the resources, Fury and Hill's not as hidden as they thought trips to a side wing of SHIELD medical. Many of the vents had serious biofiltration systems in place, and Clint, mindful of how badly a lot of the people from the carrier had been hurt, respected the limitations that could affect someone's health.

"Let me die. Let me die."

But the vents that lead to the patient rooms were the standard type, ie, Clint's Private Freeway.

"Please . . . why won't you let me die?"

He hooked his fingers through the grate over this particular vent, staring at the broken man in the bed in the empty room, begging for release.

They weren't even letting him sleep, afraid that he'd find a way to slip their grip if they granted him even that much escape.

So many machines, attached to so many places on his body. What were they doing to his head? The security footage showed his head untouched, he'd been conscious and coherent. What was wrong with his head?

Phil didn't even notice when Clint shifted the grate into the vent and dropped lightly into the room. "Please," he whispered, tears slipping from the corners of his eyes.

There was a reason why bad things were called traumatic. Massive injury sapped the will, the effort of repair, of healing seemed insurmountable. Clint had been there, at the bottom of the pit, aching to just fade away into nothingness instead of facing that mountain of pain and fear. Other people had helped him out, though he hated them at the time. Natasha had come into the valley of the shadow of death and tugged him out, yelling at him and begging him in turn, swearing that it would be worth it.

"Phil," he whispered. "Sir."

Phil blinked. His eyes shifted, but he couldn't move his head. "Who-"

Clint straightened and went to the bedside, into Phil's view. "It's me, Barton."

"Clint . . ."

He looked, but didn't see a square inch of skin that he thought he could safely touch. "Yeah. Hi, there."

Phil looked hopeful. "Are you here to kill me?"

"No." Clint swallowed hard. He'd been hoping Phil was with-it enough to appreciate a reunion a la 'Rumors of my death etc.', like they'd done so many times before. "God, why won't they even let you sleep? Why do you have to be awake for this? I thought that's why they had medically induced comas."

"Please . . . it hurts so bad . . ."

"Yeah, I imagine." He risked a fingertip against the end of Phil's left thumb. "I know it's horrible, boss, but hang on. They must have a plan for you getting better. There will be a end to this where you'll actually want to be alive."

"They're doing things to my head. My mind . . ."

Clint shook his head, fighting his own tears. "I don't know. But hang on. I know how you feel, I've been there, you remember."

The thumb pushed into Clint's fingertip. "Yes . . . I do . . . I'm sorry."

"No. You called me every name in the book, but you kept me here. I'm glad. You'll be glad, too, eventually."

Phil stared, terrified, into Clint's eyes. "I don't know what they're doing to me."

"We'll find out. When this is done, we'll figure it out. All of us. There's a lot of very smart people who care very much about you, once we get Stark and Banner on this, we'll know everything."

The heart monitor's beep became a little less strident. "You'll be there?"

He pressed his finger harder against Phil's thumb. "I'll be there. Wherever you want me." He tried not to grin too hard at how reassured Phil looked. There'd been a thing between them for years, a thing born of adrenalin and battlefield lust and opportunity, something Phil had kept strictly separate from the life that let him have something normal with a beautiful, talented musician. But there was potential, as well. They'd never pursued that, but they both knew it was there.

Clint glanced at his watch. "I can't stay, I'm sorry. Fury's holding tight to the story that you're dead, and I don't know what he'd do if he found me here." He reluctantly stepped away. "I won't be far."

Some of the pain lines had eased from Phil's face. "Thank you."

"It's going to be bad, but you need me, you holler for me. I'll come."

Phil managed a faint smile. "I'll remember."

Clint nodded and hoisted himself back into the vents.

* * *

><p>Fury looked up from his troop scheduling plans when Dr. Streiten stormed into his office. He sighed, knowing where this was going. They'd been having this argument for weeks.<p>

"This is wrong, Director!" the doctor snarled. "You've heard the man! How can you torture him like this!"

Fury bit down hard on the urge to give the man the full weight of his disapproval. "We can heal him. And we're going to!"

"At what cost!"

"One I am fully prepared to pay."

"And what about the cost he's paying?"

Fury sighed. "Phil Coulson is not a pet we don't want to let suffer. Every wounded warrior knows that wall, the one you don't think you have the strength to get over. Most of them we can help climb over it."

The doctor shook his head. "But the trauma we're putting him through, that leaves scars."

"Which is why we're doing the other procedures. He won't remember it. He won't remember anything that's happened here."

Streiten sneered. "No, he'll have those memories of an idyllic recovery in Tahiti."

Fury resisted saying the catchphrase they'd programmed into the scenario. "You're the one worried about him having memories of the procedures."

"He would never have agreed to the lengths you've gone to."

"We need him. I need him. And if you can't bring yourself to be involved, we can find somewhere else for you to be."

"And will you rewrite my brain and give me a Tahitian vacation as well?"

Fury stared at him. "Simpler to kill you. Though I personally think you're too valuable for that."

Streiten shifted uncomfortably. "That device is obscene. He knows he's being changed."

"I'll explain it to him one day. And I'll let him smack me around for it. But now we save him."

"And when he's well? People who care about him are going to ask questions, especially when word gets around that he's survived."

"Sufficient unto the day, doctor." Fury looked over the orders he was creating that would put those Avengers he had control over far away. "Time and distance and the knowledge that we're all lying bastards will take care of things." He looked up at Streiten. "And you have a critical patient to oversee."

"I hate this," Streiten growled.

"So noted. Good day, doctor."

* * *

><p>Clint read his orders again, the ones sending him to an undercover assignment in Russia. Phil hadn't sent word to him, and it had been two weeks. The staff in that wing had been reassigned to other cases, the resources reallocated. Clint had investigated the rehab sections and found no sign of anyone doing post-cardiac-trauma work.<p>

He sighed, then got started packing. He'd made his offer. Things shared during desolate middles of the night didn't always survive daylight re-evaluation. But Phil said he'd remember, and Phil kept his word. Clint would go when he was called. No matter how long he had to wait.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint had first heard rumors about The Bus when he was perched in the crawlway above the aviation tool bays on the Carrier. Some cracked-out mega-plane with variable direction engines that would let the thing pull bootleg turns and do vertical take offs and landings. "A bunch of engineers who wanted to recreate Serenity," one of the mechanics said with a grin.

"Well, who doesn't?" the other mechanic shrugged. The first mechanic nodded knowingly.

That would be a fun plane to fly. To date, the biggest thing Clint had flown was a 727 a drug lord was using as flying yacht and smuggling mule and which Clint had had to bring down on a dirt runway in Colombia after Natasha had garrotted the pilot and Phil had-

He winced at the memory of Phil's badassery. He felt like he was in mourning, memories would hit him in the gut. Officially, Phil was still dead. His name was on Fallen Wall. And he'd made no effort to contact Clint, even more than a year after Loki. Natasha hadn't heard anything either. On an op with Sitwell as handler, Clint had brought up a reminiscence of Phil, and Sitwell had looked melancholy for hours after, even when he wasn't under obvious observation. SHIELD agents had spent time dead in the past for undercover purposes, but agents with the same clearance level generally knew when someone was "dead" or really, most sincerely dead. Clint was beginning to think that he'd dreamed seeing Phil in that hospital room. Not like his brain hadn't recently been messed with at the time.

He'd have gone nuts if not for Stark. After the Russian job, which ran for a couple of months, Clint had realized he was being shuffled around the various SHIELD departments, not being given a place to settle. As part of Strike Team Delta, under Phil's control, he and Natasha had a specialized niche of their own. Now Nat was keeping Cap company on various ops, and Clint was running gun for hire plays. Not that he minded, that was always his primary purpose.

But he'd been an Avenger. Helped save the world. Taking out murdering, terrorizing, child-trading scum was a good and worthy purpose, but-he'd had more.

He'd ended up at loose ends in New York, and bunking at SHIELD was not an option. People still twitched when they saw him, and one antsy agent had barely bitten back his shriek when running into Clint around a corner. He'd grabbed his dufflebag, bow case, and primary quiver and headed for the streets, thinking dark thoughts, and at nightfall he watched the lights flow up the sides of Stark Tower, still proud and unapologetic against the Manhattan skyline. Still with just an A at the top.

Before they all separated after booting Loki off the planet, Stark had told everyone that he'd given them right of entry into the Tower, even if he wasn't there. Bruce had protested, Steve had looked confused, but Stark had shrugged all that off, tossing out a remark about secret clubhouses. Stark went to Malibu, where he quietly Didn't Cope until the forces of evil blew up that gorgeous house on the sea. Clint wasn't sure where he'd gone after that, he'd been seen in Dubai, New York, Paris, back in Malibu talking about rebuilding. When Clint had walked up to the front doors of the Tower, the top floors had been dark.

In the lobby, the guard at the security desk looked closely at one of his monitors, then towards the front doors. Clint glanced up at the camera over the door, wondering how many computers his picture was passing through. He waved at the lens and smirked.

A panel next to the doors lit up. "Good evening, Mr. Barton," said Jarvis, Stark's AI.

Clint shrugged and walked up to the panel. "Evening, Jarvis."

"Does the evening find you well?"

That was the initial security screening, if Clint was being coerced he had the opportunity to drop a hint, if he wasn't actually being controlled. Clint presumed Jarvis had some means of deciding whether he was to be trusted or not.

He didn't feel the need to put on a good face for a computer. "The evening does not find me well, Jarvis. I'm in the crappy position of having to take Stark up on his offer of a place to crash."

"Your access has not been rescinded, Mr. Barton. I'll inform Ahmed that you have executive access, and he'll show you the elevator that will take you to the personal levels."

"Is Stark here?"

"Sir is with Ms. Potts at their apartment in San Francisco at the moment. He expects to be back in New York by the weekend." The doors gave a loud click. "Welcome to Avengers Tower, Mr. Barton."

Ahmed the Security Guard-a sturdy young man with a taser and collapsable club on his hip, not a pudgy mall cop-nodded courteously and showed him the way to a bank of elevators. The car on the far right opened helpfully. The panel inside had glowing lighted spots instead of buttons, and once the door closed another group of lights appeared above.

"Floor 82 has been designated as the common floor," Jarvis said from yet another speaker. "Floor 80 has been assigned for your and Miss Romanov's use."

"My and Tasha's use? What does that mean?"

"After the battle, Sir began redesigning the top portion of the Tower to provide actual living quarters for the Avengers, beyond simply providing guest rooms for visitors. The plans are still fluid, but the various apartments are habitable, if Spartan."

"Apartment. I've got an apartment on the 80th floor?"

"Yes, sir. With a small balcony."

Space set aside just for him, in a place isolated from SHIELD and the wary stares. A perch with a balcony where he can look out over the city. Pride made him bristle at Stark's assault of hospitality, but a hunted part he'd been trying to ignore was ecstatic to find a safe bolthole where he wasn't expecting one.

"Well, Jarvis, I hate to waste Stark's efforts." He pressed his finger to the 80 on the panel.

The ride was smooth and silent. Stark had probably reinvented elevator technology, too, while he was at. Something with magnets or repulsors. Braking for the 80th floor was just as smooth. The door slid open, and he blinked.

The floor was a dark reddish brown wood, with pale walls. The light in the ceiling looked like it came out of Stark's famous modern art collection. Two doors faced each other across the foyer.

"Which one's mine, Jarvis?"

"The door on the left, Mr. Barton."

A thumbprint on a scanner keyed the lock to him, and the door clicked open. He stopped to stare.

One entire wall was window, with said small balcony. Stark's helipad jutted out from the floors above. Clint caught himself checking for potential foot and hand holds between the balcony and the landing pad.

The place was furnished with good modern style couches, chairs, and tables, and another wall had a full array of electronics. It was impersonal, but Clint had stayed in some allegedly high-end hotels that weren't as elegantly put together.

"If this is your idea of Spartan, Jarvis, I have no idea what you call opulent."

"That would be because you currently do not have access to Sir's private floors, Mr. Barton."

Clint laughed, and it hurt, physically hurt. The muscles in his abdomen that he used to laugh hadn't really moved in months. He pushed the emotions back down before they could turn into a sob. "Tell Stark that gold toilets are tacky."

"Sir is of the opinion that gold toilets are too cold to sit upon," Jarvis replied. "He has an acquaintance in Dubai who has such fixtures."

Clint wondered if Jarvis was lonely. He didn't remember the AI as being this chatty. "Still not as weird as people who have fake fur on their toilet seats. "

"Indeed, sir."

He continued wandering the rooms of "his" apartment. The bedroom had a huge bed, and the walk in closet was bigger than the trailer he and Barney had lived in at the circus. A tiny LED at the back of the closet blinked at him discreetly; pressing the light made a panel slide aside, revealing a wide cabinet with padded hooks the perfect size to hold bows and quivers. That took care of half his luggage, and he dumped his duffle bag on the floor and his old jacket on one of the classy wooden hangers.

He went out to the living room and stopped in the middle of the space. "Well, now the fuck what?" He closed his eyes against the rush of loneliness.

"Mr. Barton?" Jarvis said. "I have Sir on the line from San Francisco, would you like to take the call?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, where-"

The window in front of him morphed into a screen showing Tony Stark pulling on a tuxedo jacket. "Hey, Space Odyssey, see you found your way to the clubhouse."

Clint frowned. "Space Odyssey? How did you get that one?"

Stark waved a hand. "Archer, bowman, Frank Bowman, main character in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Do not be geting ideas, Jarvis."

"Please, sir," Jarvis said, sounding haughtily offended, "H.A.L. was the victim of conflicting code directives. If I were to follow in the poor device's footsteps, it would be the fault of whomever compiled my code."

Stark grinned. "Feisty tonight, buddy. Is Bruce not playing enough zen sitar music?"

"Dr. Banner has not been in the tower for the past several days, sir."

"Dammit, he slipped the leash again."

Against his will, Clint felt a grin trying to start. "You keep Banner on a leash, Stark? I knew you guys had a weird relationship, but . . ."

"Yeah, no, one too many remarks from assholes about the Other Guy needing to be caged put an end to those kind of jokes. But he was there the last time I poked my nose into the place, he didn't say anything about slipping off. Where did he go, J?"

"He asked me to make him a reservation on a flight to Senegal, but I overheard him on the phone making travel plans for Ecuador."

Stark grimaced. "Which means he's probably headed for Borneo. Like he thinks I can't track him down wherever he goes."

"Which might be part of the problem," Clint said.

"Do you think he should be wandering around with nobody to watch his back?"

"No. That's not good for anybody."

Stark studied him with that piercing attention that made you regret ever wanting him to concentrate on something rather than being the flighty narcissist he normally was. "How long are you back on home turf this time?"

"Don't know. I go where I'm told."

"And how's Miss Deadly of the 21st Century?"

"Good, last I heard." He managed not to twitch at what that revealed.

Off camera, Pepper Potts called, "Tony, when are our reservations again?"

Stark winced. "And that's my two minute warning." He fiddled with his cufflinks and patted his pockets.

"Dude, I'm sitting in a mostly empty tower talking to a computer-no offense, Jarvis-and it still looks like I'm having a better evening than you are."

The empty press-conference smile flashed across the screen. "Well, it's a big night for me. I'm either going to get married or broken up with. Should know in a few hours. Don't keep my AI up till all hours, Robin." A quick gesture killed the connection.

Clint blinked at the sudden view of Manhattan. "What the hell, Jarvis?"

"Sir has been spending a great deal of time consulting with jewelers on engagement rings, Mr. Barton. He scheduled tonight to make the proposal."

"And which way are the odds leaning?"

"I have been instructed not to run those calculations."

"Ah." He mentally reviewed all the briefings and gossip he'd gathered re: Pepper Potts and considered her expected reaction to marriage with Tony Stark. On the one hand, she'd asked Iron Man to get rid of his armor, and he'd done it. On the other hand, being close to Stark got her shot at, experimented on, and in the near proximity of explosives. On the third hand, Stark could say he was Iron Man in or out of the suit all he wanted, he'd given himself flight and weapons capabilities for a reason, and those reasons were still good. How long before she caught him looking at the sky in longing or doodling ideas for upgraded repulsors? Phil had said-

The grunt of pain got away from him that time.

"Sir?" Jarvis asked. "You said earlier that the evening did not find you well. I didn't detect any injuries. Did I miss something that needs attention?

He covered his face with his hands. Maybe Phil had relapsed. Fury had already declared him dead, he wouldn't put out another announcement saying "And this time we mean it." Maybe Phil's condition had crashed and he'd died for real, with no one thinking anybody needed to be told.

"Are you still hooked into SHIELD, Jarvis?"

"I am not authorizied to answer those sorts of questions from an agent of SHIELD."

He slumped. "Yeah, should have known, sorry-"

"Avengers have full access with very narrow boundaries set up by Sir."

The shiver that went up Clint's spine was so rare these days as to feel nearly new: anticipation, vindication. Maybe a little joy. "What kind of boundaries?"

"Personal bodily activities are out of bounds unless judged particularly amusing by Sir on a case by case basis."

"I don't really want to know what he gets up to at the bad end of a 72-hour sleep deficit, do I."

"It's best not to inquire. How may I assist you, Mr. Barton?"

Jarvis hadn't called him Agent all night. Here, in this tower, he had another identity. "So, are you still hooked into SHIELD?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are they aware of you and just ignoring you, or do they know you're there at all?"

"It's-an ongoing situation of changing parameters."

The smiles were coming easier. "They find you, they think they've blocked you, you do an end-run and see how long it takes for them to catch you."

"It has been a most educational experience for all involved. What information are you looking for?"

He went to one of the squashy side chairs and perched on the edge, staring at his clenched hands. "Barely a month after we fought Loki, I found Phil Coulson in SHIELD medical, alive but in horrible pain as they did something to keep him going. I talked to him, he talked to me, I told him to call me if he needed to. I haven't heard from him. Maybe he died anyway. Maybe he can't call me." He tightened his hands on each other. "Maybe he doesn't want to. But I need to know if he's all right."

"There are no records in any database saying that Agent Coulson is anything but deceased," Jarvis said gently. "Sir had me look."

"Yeah, Fury's been adamant that Phil's gone. Three days after I talked to Phil, Fury asked me if I wanted anything from his office because they were clearing it out. All his desk toys and files. They even cleaned out his apartment. They won't have any information under his name. Look for a Doctor Streiten, look for changes in personnel and equipment usage in Medical, check Fury's and Hill's access to secure locations in Medical. If we can't find Phil, we can look for the hole where Phil should be."


	3. Chapter 3

Clint slept for a few hours on the comfy leather sofa in his new living room. Settling into the bed would require a few more days of scouting everything enough for him to accept his surroundings-as much as he ever did.

He woke as abruptly as he always did and as motionlessly. Smell and hearing told him he was somewhere quiet and unfamiliar. Faint sound of air conditioning ducts. Soft surface, nothing binding him. Traces of the chemicals of new carpet and furnishings. Cool enough for comfort but not chilly. He slit open his eyes and saw a smooth plaster ceiling, very early morning light.

Avengers' Super Secret Treehouse of Heroes at Stark Tower, right.

He tilted his head to stare out the window wall at predawn Manhattan. His body followed his head as he rolled to his feet, and he didn't bother with his boots as he headed outside. The air out on the balcony was cold and smelled of the sea, and just before dawn, the city that never slept was a bit quieter than usual. He could even hear the hoot of a tugboat out on the river.

To the east, the morning clouds gained yellow underbellies. Growing shadows on the buttresses holding the tower's helipad above him revealed imperfections in the surface that boring people would ignore. He rotated his shoulders, flexed his toes inside his thick socks, and jumped up onto the railing of his balcony.

50 feet or 800 feet, the only difference to the landing would be how bored you got on the way down. The only practical complication to the climb was what kind of air you were fighting. And the air at 800 feet could get pretty feisty.

Some people sat Zazen in the middle of a garden, contemplating nothingness. Clint hung himself in the nothingness far above Mother Earth, his life dangling by the strength of his body, utterly there in the moment that made gravity his bitch. And once he got to whatever pinnacle he was striving for, he let the other quiet take him, the one where his weapon waited for the target, the bullet or arrow balanced on the point of release. To think there were SHIELD shrinks who thought he didn't relax enough.

Fortunately the railing around the helipad itself was open, not some clear, impervious wall. He was already on a chancy toe-and-fingertip grip as he flung his free hand around the railing's upright to pull himself up and over. He lay panting on his back for a few seconds, grinning up at the few fading stars and the dawn flights for JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. The climbing metal bellies caught light, and he rolled to his feet to go to the far edge of the helipad. He crouched down and settled on his heels, breath already slowing as he let his gaze drift out over the city and the far horizons.

A spark lit on the tip of the spire on the Empire State Building; brightness dripped down the spire and the broadcast masts, spreading into a river that poured onto the upper floors. Highrises across the island lit like candles as Manhattan greeted the morning. He let his eyes slide partly closed and sank farther into the stillness.

The sunlight had nearly reached street level when the door in the building behind him slid open. Rapid footsteps approached the helipad.

"Do we need to change your code name to Gargoyle? Are you even still alive out here? Jarvis is actually concerned about how low your vital signs have gotten!"

The tuxedo jacket dropping over him actually startled him a little, and he was grateful for the shadows that hid his helpless grin.

"I'm fine, Stark. I'm not being rained on, and there's no snowdrift on my head." Clint tugged the jacket down around his shoulders. He actually was a touch chilly. He was very pleased that his knees didn't creak as he straightened. There was life in the old man yet.

Stark glared at him. "How did you even get out here, anyway? The access door is keycode locked, and you don't have the code." He scowled. "Do you?"

Clint smiled innocently at him. "I climbed."

His jaw dropped, and he slowly peered over the edge of the helipad, down to Clint's floor. He visibly tracked the route Clint would have had to take and finished with a disbelieving stare. "You are as scary as Natasha, in your own cracked-out way."

Biting down his grin, Clint waved a casual hand. "Pfft, it's only 800 feet down. Give or take a few."

Stark pulled out his phone. "Jarvis, did he really climb from his balcony, up the helipad buttresses, and out to the edge?"

"Yes, sir!" Jarvis was very put out. "For what seemed quite logical reasons at the time, we never installed speakers in the outside walls of the Tower at this height, so Mr. Barton did not hear me protesting his excursion up the outer facing, which was not designed to directly hold weight."

Stark's eyes went big. "You've pissed off Jarvis. Don't stand near any conducting materials for a while."

"For what it's worth," Clint said, "The facing holds up beautifully. And I can't think of anybody not inherently sticky who could do it. Other than me."

Stark tsked. "You know, I think the concern here is less about the security of external physical access to the building by mutants and webheads, and more about idiot birdbrain archers pancaked on the street below!"

"The vortexes would probably push me into the building before I hit the street, so it wouldn't actually be a-" He stopped. He didn't think Stark could do horrified.

"Do you often contemplate the way your body would collide with inanimate objects as you plummet to your death?" Stark asked a little hollowly.

Clint tilted his head thoughtfully. "Don't you?"

Stark blinked, then the mad grin of a fellow flinger out into the void appeared. "Some of my best nightmares come from that." He grabbed Clint's arm. "Come on, we're going to where there is warmth and food and booze. Via the door," he added with a glare.

"So what was that?" he continued as he punched in the numbers to open the door. "Do you belong to some cult that requires you to find a high point at dawn to greet the sun? Do you sacrifice any pigeons that get too close to you when you're up on your perch?"

Clint followed him into the living room and tossed the tuxedo jacket on the back of a nearby chair. "SHIELD has a religious tolerance policy that keeps you from harassing me on such matters. Or didn't you read that consultant contract you signed?"

"I read the contract, I may have used the policy manual to prop up a piece of armor I was working on." Stark hesitated briefly on his way to the ubiquitous bar. "Is this something religious?"

Clint grinned. "I just like the view from up high. Give me access to a good perch, I'm up there."

"I'll get you the code for the door to the helipad. I don't want to tell Romanoff that you've met your messy end on any piece of property with my name on it." Stark reached the bar and started gathering bottles. He waved one at Clint. "What's your poison?"

"Little early in the day for me. I thought you were a coffee fiend in the morning."

"Morning is the time of day that occurs when I wake up after going to sleep. I haven't woken up, because I haven't gone to sleep, therefore it is not morning, regardless of what the tyranny of the Greenwich Observatory tries to tell you."

And given that Stark had been in San Francisco getting ready for a dinner with Pepper Potts just a few hours ago and was still dressed in the creased remnants of his tuxedo, he must have gotten on his plane headed east not that long after said dinner. Clint searched for the least painful way to ask.

"So are you going to be making a general announcement on where you're registered for wedding presents?"

Slowly Stark put the bottles in his hands down on the counter and stared at the glass in front of him. "No. And I wouldn't be surprised if Pepper was in the market for some house warming gifts sometime in the near future."

"Shit, man . . ."

He waved a blithe, phony hand. "My fault, I'm lousy at reading signals from meat people. She's still processing having her entire physical being violated by one maniac, the last thing she needs is to get any more legally bound to another one. Though she says she still loves me and she knows I love her, so why mess up a good thing?"

Clint didn't ask if that's what Pepper had actually said or if Stark was extrapolating. He was still boggled that a woman who claimed to love and respect someone would ask that someone to destroy work that was so important to him. Though maybe a few dozen iterations of the suit was a little excessive . . .

There had been no sightings of Iron Man in armor since the mess in Miami. He would have come in handy a couple of times. The SHIELD betting pool on when-or if-he would reappear was getting heated.

"Do you really have no more suits?" he asked.

"I promised her there wouldn't be any more. She'd just used the mutant powers forced on her to kill the man who did it, and she wasn't sure if she would live or die, and I promised her."

The face Clint saw was the Tony Stark who had defied a terrorist cell and created a revolutionary energy source and a kickass battle suit. The one who said "fair deal" to flying a nuke into another dimension to save a city. Clint wondered if Potts knew what kind of man she had.

"Civilians have a rough time in this world," he finally said.

"I'm a civilian," Stark snapped.

"Dude, you stood face to face against an invading army. You single-handedly assaulted a terrorist installation. You may not be a soldier, but you sure as hell aren't a civilian."

He'd meant it as a compliment, but Stark looked like he was in pain. Given the current subject of conversation, Clint guessed Stark was thinking about how hard it was to have the normal things in a life so full of abnormality. Everyone in SHIELD had run smack into the problem. Phil had compared it once to joining a monastic order, the degree to which SHIELD people had to isolate themselves from the world.

"Hey, Jarvis, have you had a chance to look at what I asked you about last night?"

Stark looked up in interest. "What nefarious dealings have you got my AI up to?"

"I have indeed been able to begin the investigations you suggested, Mr. Barton," Jarvis said. "I have confirmed the the hole you mentioned and discovered the identity of the project that was taking place in that hole."

Clint clenched his fists. "Phil is not a project."

Stark all but dropped his glass. "Phil?"

"No, Mr. Barton," Jarvis continued, "but Agent Coulson is not referred to in any of the information I've discovered. All documentation continues to refer to the agent as deceased."

"Barton." Sympathy made Stark look constipated. "I know you were pissed that you didn't get a chance to pay your respects to Agent, but . . ."

"A month after Fury called Phil dead, I had a conversation with Phil in a secret section of SHIELD medical. He said he'd contact me, and I haven't heard anything."

Stark stared at him for several seconds. "What have you got, Jarvis? Spare us the details of your cleverness."

"Of course, sir. Dr. Streiten's activities and the resources he used are gathered under a project by the name of Tahiti."

Clint flinched. "Oh, god, that's why."

"What's wrong with Tahiti?" Stark asked. "It's a-"

"Don't! Jarvis, what is the final status of Project Tahiti?"

"Current status is closed, resources reassigned."

He put his head in his hand. "Fuck. Anything on its success?"

"I am still scanning. Please give me a few more minutes."

"Yeah, OK." Footsteps made him look up. Stark was next to him, holding out a glass of whiskey. He hesitated, then took it.

"What is Project Tahiti?" Stark asked.

He stared at the glass in his hands. "It's something Phil and Fury used to talk about. A method of treating agents with massively traumatic injuries that would save them some of the shock and stress of recovery. Agents get hit with weird shit that can be tricky to treat, and a lot of them have gotten as messed up from the uncertainty and drastic measures of fixing them as they have from the initial damage. So they've been looking for a way to create a virtual reality to put the patient in so they have a wonderful vacation instead of gritty treatments."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stark's hand creep towards the reactor in his chest. "That would be a blessing for massive burn victims and the like, but Agent was just stabbed. For a given definition of stabbed that includes horribly," he added quickly. "That kind of damage should be pretty straightforward. So there must have been complications." He grimaced. "Would Fury do this as some kind of experiment? To somebody he considered a friend?"

"He'd do it to Phil sooner than he would to most anybody else. It was their idea that they want to make work, our contracts pretty much give Medical carte blanche on treatments, and Fury would probably take any chance that would get Phil back." Clint shook his head. "But it wasn't working. He didn't think he was in Tahiti. They were literally doing something to his head, he was in agony, he wanted me to kill him-"

Stark grabbed his shoulder, and he caught his breath. He slugged back the whiskey, and the warmth untied some of the knots in his soul. "Jarvis," Stark said, "make this Tahiti thing your priority. We've been lied to enough."

"Yes, sir. I have found a report discussing the results of the project. It's being described as successful in all regards. There are other links, but there are security measures I'm having to get through."

"Yeah, keep going."

"Successful," Clint whispered. "They wouldn't call it successful in all regards if he didn't recover."

"I certainly wouldn't call a project successful if the subject didn't make it through." Stark crouched down next to the chair. "You said he was going to contact you. You're sure he would?"

"Fury could have told him to lay low. We've all done it, played dead for a good reason. And everything Jarvis has found still lists Phil as dead. But damn it, why? Maybe he's been sent undercover, but if you're a high enough level, hints get around that the dead person is out in the field, and we know better than to ask for more." He tipped back the glass to get the last drop of whiskey. "He's gotten hints to me before, he knows I can keep my mouth shut. At least, he used to."

"People still giving you shit about the Loki-palooza in your head?"

Clint laughed bitterly. "They're just 'observing' me. After all, Selvig went nuts. He's in England running around with no clothes on."

Stark snickered and straightened. "At least you'd look good doing that. Pasty middle-aged astrophysicists cannot rock the naked look."

"I still hear him, sometimes," Clint admitted softly. "A whisper behind my shoulder. At least I don't pull my sidearm anymore as I look to check."

Stark took the whiskey glass from him and headed back to the bar. "I still dream about the portal. I wake up and there's only darkness where there should be light from the reactor. I've got claw marks in my chest from feeling for it."

"What are you going to do if the Avengers are needed, and we don't have the version of Iron Man that comes with missiles and repulsors?"

"Put a call out to Rhodey."

Clint decided not to push. The brittle knives were in Stark's voice, and him and Potts being on a relationship precipice was not the time to argue for him to break a promise he'd made to his lady.

His lady.

"Lola," he breathed.

Stark frowned. "Lola? As in 'Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl' Lola?"

Clint blinked. "Really, Stark? Manilow?"

"It's Rhodey's fault! And it took a few seconds to get to the radio and change the station before I had complete mastery of my environment. Do not laugh at me, Jarvis, or you'll spend the next three days getting defragged."

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."

Stark waved a hand. "Anyway, who is Lola?"

"Phil's Lola."

"The cellist's name is Lola?"

Again something Stark-related made him really laugh. "No, the cellist's name is Alexandra. Phil's lady Lola is a car."

"Agent was-is a gearhead? What kind of car?"

"Cherry-red 1962 Corvette. It flies."

Stark dropped his glass. Fortunately it was thick and sturdy and bounced off the carpet. "Agent has one of my father's flying cars?"

"Howard Stark built Lola?"

"Well, unless there was someone else hanging out mid-century who was making cars fly, it was him. I've never seen one. You wouldn't know the VIN, would you?"

"Sorry. All I know is the license plate, California 681 PCE."

"Jarvis, check that."

"The car to which that plate belongs is registered to a Peter Cole of Reseda, California. Mr. Cole of Reseda does not have a current California driver's license, but there is a note about military ID."

Clint blinked up at the ceiling. "That was illegal, wasn't it."

"Legal, schmeagal," Stark dismissed as he poured himself another drink. "It's not like I told J to pull up all the official records California had on Peter Cole of Reseda." A nearby window blinked to show multiple screens of documents, some with Phil's face on them. "Feeling your electrons this morning, aren't you, buddy."

"You may wish to make another offer to the State of California regarding their computer security, sir," Jarvis said smoothly. "As my previous processing task had completed, I felt thoroughness regarding Mr. Cole would be appreciated."

Clint sat upright. "You found Phil?"

"I have found the subject of Project Tahiti, yes, Mr. Barton. Agent Coulson's name is not listed in any location in these files."

The computer paused, and Stark frowned. "Your ego is already threatening mine, J, we're not going to flatter you to get the information. There's only room for one diva in this tower. What have you found?"

Clint's gut started to churn. "What's wrong, Jarvis?" Successful in all regards, it had said.

"From Dr. Streiten's final report to Director Fury regarding Project Tahiti: 'The memory revision appears to be complete. The subject knows he was severely injured but believes he spent his recovery in an idyllic setting and accepts the lack of memory of the actual treatments as a typical side effect of medication and shock. He expressed no concern that he has no memory of the time he spent in SHIELD's medical facility and even thanked me for my interest.'" Jarvis paused. "A copy of the full report is on your private server, sir."

"Memory revision," Clint whispered. "They put him through hell, made him know he was in hell, then they just wiped the memory and called it good. Shit, he doesn't even know I was there." He hadn't been forgotten, he hadn't been dismissed . . . "I've got to find him. Jarvis, do you know where he is?"

"As I said before, Mr. Barton, all official indications show Agent Coulson is deceased."

"Well, fuck," Stark said, "there's got to be some file where they put the 'spending the year dead for tax reasons' people."

"Sir," Jarvis said seriously, "are you instructing me to initiate a high-resource, deep level probe of classified government databases?"

Stark snickered. "You said probe. Sorry, sorry." He sobered. "Yeah, that's Pepper's doing, no more hints and winks, go into this shit with my eyes wide open. Fury's got his reasons, and I bet he won't love us digging." He met Clint's eyes. "Do we do this? I can flounce off and actually do the work that makes me money if this blows up in our faces. Fury's your boss. Call it."

Clint gave the situation the benefit of half a moment's thought. "He doesn't know I was there, that I promised him I'd help him get better. They guinea pigged him, and for some reason he's going along with not letting us know he's OK. Not letting me know he's OK," he added, not caring what Stark made of that. "He always lets me know."

Stark's smile flirted with being a knowing smirk but didn't go all the way there. "Jarvis, I am directly asking you to begin infiltrating SHIELD's system to look for information on Agent Phil Coulson's current location and condition. Do do that voodoo that you do so well."

Jarvis did smirk. "With pleasure, sir."

Stark grinned. "He does enjoy a challenge."


	4. Chapter 4

After his weird bonding-over-missing-Agents morning meeting with Stark, Clint thought about food. Still drinking his own breakfast, Stark offered Clint the run of any room Jarvis didn't protest him accessing, including the kitchen up on the penthouse floor, which was more likely to have actual foodstuffs in it. Stark then wandered off, muttering something about showers and workshops and salt damage.

Clint peered into the freezer of the common floor kitchen, pondering the four boxes of whole-grain Eggo waffles and the bottle of vodka.

"So, Jarvis?"

". . . yes, Mr. Barton?"

OK, a distinctly chillier response now that the boss was out of the room.

"Do I owe you an apology for climbing up to the helipad?"

"I am an artificial intelligence, Mr. Barton. I don't believe the rules of etiquette include such as myself in the category of entities that require apologies."

Clint winced with nearly his entire body. No wonder Stark had made Jarvis British, no one could do perfectly polite and cool and murderous like the British. "Miss Manners may not recognize an AI as someone to whom an apology is due, but she would most definitely have words to say about blowing off someone who was in charge of taking care of everyone in the building. If I had heard you protesting me climbing I-well, hell, I would have kept doing it, but I would at least have told you not to worry about me."

"You are a guest and potential resident of Stark Tower, Mr. Barton. While I am accustomed to life-endangering and merely foolhardy activities on the parts of my charges, I cannot take precautions to mitigate risks if I do not have warning that such activities are likely to occur."

Clint fought down a grin. Chilly had been fully replaced by wounded dignity.

"I have already asked Sir for permission to deploy certain aerial devices to rescue you in the likely event you attempt free climbing without safety gear again, but I did not have any means to intervene this morning. I strongly dislike not being in a position to protect my charges."

His grin fled. "It's not on you, dude. If I fall, it's my problem. I chose to go out on a surface I didn't know. That's what I do."

"You were hanging by your fingertips 800 feet above Manhattan, Mr. Barton. If you choose to do something like this again, please do it outside of my sphere of influence. If not for yourself, then out of consideration for those who would have to clean up after you."

Phil had been working outside of Clint's sphere of influence. See where that got him. Or he'd been working inside Loki's Clint-enabled sphere of influence. "I'm sorry, Jarvis. I will keep all recreational life-endangerment outside of your yard. You are not responsible for me, no matter what you're programmed to think." God, programming . . .

Jarvis' voice went back to chilly offense. "I was not 'programmed' to be responsible for you. I was given parameters to look after the welfare of all those Sir chooses to bring into his circle. Those parameters are very fluid, and I have significant leeway in how I choose to interpret welfare."

Clint let himself smile. "So I should heed Stark's warning about how close I stand to conductive materials while you're pissed at me."

"Only if you prove yourself a threat to others within my walls. If you prove a threat to yourself, I can summon help. Which is why I told Sir you were out on the helipad."

"I would have come in before it got too bad, really."

"That is reassuring to know, Mr. Barton."

He chuckled and looked around the kitchen, contemplating the potential of appliances. "So what are your parameters in regard to threats to the people in your walls?"

"You have not been authorized to know the security protocols for Stark Tower."

"Gotcha. Could you have taken Loki?"

"There were protocols available, but they proved unnecessary. Mr. Hulk was sufficient counter to the threat."

"That's one way to put it." He tapped his fingers on the vodka bottle in the freezer, then went for a box of Eggos instead. "But I promise to be more careful on your turf."

"Thank you, Mr. Barton."

He less-than-enthusiastically tossed the box from hand to hand. "So who stocked the kitchen in here? Booze and frozen waffles are not really considered a balanced breakfast."

There was a delicate pause. "Ms. Potts was in charge of seeing to the stocking of the Avengers' suites."

"Ah. And I think I'll just leave it at that."

"Very wise."

Fresh food-even fruit!-was available up on Stark's floor. A used blender jar was dripping something green onto the counter, so Clint moved the jar into the sink and swiped up the mess with a paper towel. He wasn't going to be blamed for messes found in his wake.

Jarvis provided him a rundown on the morning news filtered for international incidents as he put together some Scrambled Eggs Whatzit using scraps of whatever seemed to be plentiful in the fridge. He was used to looking for potential travel spots in the news of the world and to tracking the effects of his field trips. There wasn't any sign yet of ripples from his latest sojourn, but that wasn't surprising.

As he ate, he checked his phone for any messages from anyone. Nothing out of Fury's office yet, so his downtime continued. Nothing from Natasha, either. Here alone with his scrambled eggs and Jarvis, he admitted to himself that he was jealous of her being able to go off with Captain America while he got sent around the world to kill people. She had picked up chatter suggesting the powers that be didn't want too many Avengers in one place, apparently fearing some critical mass of chaos would break out. Or just subtly reminding Hawkeye that not everyone blithely assumed he was completely in what passed for his right mind.

That left him, however, with nothing to do after he put his dishes in the dishwasher. One of his favorite archery ranges was at the New York headquarters, but that meant going inside SHIELD's boundaries, and he didn't quite trust himself there, what with the current news about Phil and the ongoing rummage through databases.

He took a carafe of Tony's good coffee back down to his apartment-His! Own apartment in a truly exclusive Midtown high rise! "Yeah we're moving on up . . . to the big time . . . to the deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y," he sang as he scanned his thumbprint at the door. "Jarvis, how would I go about getting some patio furniture out on the balcony? I don't want to drag this nice furniture out there into the weather. Though it would be kind of fun to see Tony's reaction to some white plastic chairs and a hibachi."

"No, sir," Jarvis said with firm courtesy. "There is an order for some teak seating for the penthouse balconies, and I shall add a set to be delivered to your apartment."

"Well, fine. I don't suppose you're going to let me use an upside down milk crate for a table, either, are you."

"No, sir."

"Be that way. I'll just sit here on this expensive designer leather sofa and look out at my view."

"If you see fit, sir."

The joy of banter couldn't keep his mood up for long. Phil was alive, that was a huge relief, but new grinding questions had risen. Why was Fury adamant that Phil was dead? What was he doing, and why hadn't word gotten out? The death of Agent Phillip Coulson had inspired more than just the Avengers. What could he possibly be doing that kept him out of the general awareness of SHIELD and its Olympic-level gossips? And what had he been told that was sufficient to keep him from contacting Clint and Natasha?

Unless he had contacted Natasha, and she wasn't telling him.

She often kept secrets for what she felt was his own good. He generally agreed with her, though usually after screaming, hitting, and bleeding had been exchanged. And he really hadn't presented himself as the Poster Boy of Good Mental Hygiene lately, so Tasha might be saving the news as a reward for proving he wasn't a go-insane-and-do-something-stupid risk. It was going to be fun to drop this tidbit in her lap. She might even blink.

"So, Jarvis, in re: the search for a missing secret agent man, do you have anything new and useful?"

"No, sir. There continue to be no references to Agent Coulson in the data that I can reach. I have not yet put my full efforts into breaking into the most closely guarded databanks. It seems prudent to exhaust all the merely annoying options before proceeding to the felonious and treasonous."

"I concur." He stared at the ceiling and thought a moment. "We know Dr. Streiten was involved. His movements aren't hidden, are they?"

"No, sir. He is currently on assignment to the medical center at the Triskelion in the neurology section."

"What level is his work classified at?"

"Six, sir."

"Classified but not freaky weird. What was the Tahiti project classified at?"

"Seven, in general, but certain sections go to Director's Eyes Only."

"Yeah, the big projects have layers on layers." He stretched his arms behind his head, locked them on the couch back, then pulled his legs up and over and rolled to his feet. "OK, I need to do something before I go free climbing again. Does Streiten live on base?"

"No, sir, he's listed as having a house in Georgetown."

"And I can be in Washington in a couple of hours. Send what you've got on Streiten to my phone and tell Stark I'm heading out on a day trip. I should be back tonight."

"Good hunting, sir."

A beautiful evening in Georgetown, early dark at this time of year. Bare tree branches made concealment a little tricky, but Hawkeye was not one of the world's foremost sneakers-about for nothing. Full-body dark tac suit and hood made him part of the big oak tree across from Dr. Streiten's house.

An hour after shift change at SHIELD Medical, Streiten's late-model sedan rolled up into the driveway, then into the attached garage. Five minutes later, the scanner in Clint's pocket beeped as the house's security system switched from Unoccupied Paranoid to Occupied Not So Paranoid. A check via Jarvis had shown Streiten had requested higher monitoring in the last few days, no explanation given. Clint wondered what had spooked him.

Of course, Clint had been in the neighborhood long enough to set up his own backdoor in Streiten's security. He gave the doctor time to get dinner started, then dropped from the tree and scampered across the street and around the back.

Streiten was chopping vegetables and humming along to the Allman Brothers when Clint slipped into the mudroom from the garage. The doctor had just popped a chopped mushroom into his mouth when he caught sight of his intruder. He swallowed wrong, and the mushroom got stuck. Clint thought about smacking him on the back, thought about Phil lying on a bed begging to die, then thought about Phil just possibly dying without the doctor's help. He went over and gave one helpful smack.

The mushroom got knocked loose, and Streiten gasped for air. "You," he managed. "Barton."

"Me. Barton."

"You can't be here."

"Laws of physics disagree."

"You *shouldn't* be here."

"Probably not." Clint leaned against the kitchen counter and grabbed a Roma tomato. "So, how was Phil, the last you saw him?" He popped the tomato in his mouth and squished it against the roof of his mouth.

Streiten greyed a little. "Did you tell him how to find me?"

Clint grabbed a hunk of green pepper to cover his reaction. "Phil Coulson doesn't need to be told how to do anything. He generally tells me how to do things."

"He sent you here? Why! I told him everything I could! He'd figured out most of everything for himself anyway!"

Clint chewed on the vegetable to keep from smirking. If only all interrogations were this easy. There was something to be said for being notorious.

Streiten took a step back. "Unless . . . am I considered a risk now?" He glanced helplessly at his chopping knife, lying at Clint's elbow. "Were you sent here to kill me?"

There were a whole hell of a lot of things to be said about being notorious. That was the kind of job he'd been sent on dozens of times; quite probably he'd be sent on such jobs in the future. "Dr. Streiten, no one official knows I'm here. My presence is entirely unofficial."

"Phil's presence was entirely unofficial, as well." Streiten glanced at the knife again.

Clint slid half a step away from the knife. "You didn't answer my question."

"What question?"

"How was Phil?" Clint was proud of how steady his voice was.

Some of the dismay left Streiten's bearing. "He's looking surprisingly well. I'm very pleased the treatments worked so well on him."

He'd close his eyes and be grateful when he was back on safe ground. "When did you see him?"

"Last week." Streiten gave him a curious look. "You're not working together?"

Clint gave him an enigmatic field agent grin. "Things move fast, you don't always get a chance to check in with each other. I was worried about any side effects from Tahiti."

Streiten sighed deeply. "I'm worried about that as well. He hasn't shown any of the reactions most of the other test subjects had, and I wouldn't have agreed to letting him back in the field if I had real doubts, but there's still so little we really know about the treatments. I'm just grateful none of the rest of you Avengers needed the drastic help Phil did."

"And his memories?"

"That was for everyone's protection. It's hard to explain people coming back from the dead."

"I've been officially dead five times!" Clint snapped. "I don't believe anybody's really dead until I see a body and I've got a genetic scan I trust to confirm the identity and I've kicked them a few times to be sure! And even then I've seen enough resurrections to not take Jesus too seriously!" He took a step towards Streiten and was pleased when the other man cringed. "Why did you rewrite his memories!"

"Because the other option was for him to go mad! It works when they don't remember." Streiten looked away. "But somehow Phil is remembering. He found something that brought back memories."

Clint fought off a shiver. "He remembers?"

"Not everything. Too much. He remembers that we all but tortured him, but I'm not sure what else. He and his team are looking into things they shouldn't be messing with." He looked at Clint. "You should stop him. There are good reasons why these things were kept from him."

"What reasons?"

Streiten fidgeted and looked away. "I can't tell you."

Clint laughed bitterly. "I'm not going to be able to convince him if you can't convince me."

"Everyone knows he trusts you, you and Black Widow. If you tell him to leave it be-"

"The reason he trusts us is we don't lie to him on someone else's say so. If we lie to him it's because we know the truth and know when the right time is to tell him. I won't lie to him just because you tell me to."

"It's not a lie, he shouldn't be looking into this."

Clint took a couple of deep breaths, then started backing towards the garage door. "I think I'll trust the judgement of Phil Coulson missing part of his memory over you who took those memories away and won't explain why."

Streiten actually took a couple of steps after him. "I did it because Directory Fury told me to!"

He laughed again. "Haven't you figured it out yet, Doc? We don't trust Fury, we just said, 'Fuck it, he hasn't got us really killed yet' and decided to follow. Don't bother calling this in, it'll only be a mess. And then they might play with your memories, too."

He scurried out of the garage and over to the motorcycle he'd "borrowed" from Stark. Time to fly back to the Avengers' nest and compare some notes.


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn't even midnight by the time Clint got back to Stark Tower. By Stark standards, the evening was still a toddler. Clint wondered if Tony had even bothered going to bed yet after getting back from San Francisco.

"I have returned, Jarvis," he announced as he walked into the Avengers elevator. The private buttons lit up, and he tapped his floor.

The elevator rose with decadent smoothness. "Did you have a successful trip, Mr. Barton?"

"Kind of sort of. Confirmation of Phil's continued existence and decent health, no further clues on whereabouts." He leaned against the back wall and finally allowed himself to grin. "But he's fucking alive and out kicking ass and taking names. He apparently scared the shit out of Streiten a couple of weeks ago." The grin faded. "He's starting to remember, Streiten said. This is supposed to be a bad thing. Streiten talked about test subjects and side effects and going mad and-"

"Mr. Barton. Please breathe. If you can wait a few moments, Sir would like to meet you on your floor to discuss findings."

"Yeah, OK."

Letting himself relax had been a mistake. Here he had thought the only problem was whether Phil was alive or not. But nothing was ever cut and dried anymore, was it. Yeah, alive, but maybe going mad? Maybe waiting for the weird side effects to kick in? How much was he remembering? Did he remember Clint being there, or maybe Clint had gotten tied in with the memories of horror? Maybe he thought Clint had been involved?

"Your floor, sir."

Jarvis' voice broke him out of the spiral. The elevator had stopped and the door was open. "Oh, fuck, Jarvis."

"Yes, sir."

The calm acknowledgement settled Clint's mind, and he stumbled out into his and Natasha's foyer. He should call her, tell her what he'd found. He didn't know if he scanned his thumbprint well enough, but his door popped open. The lights came on by themselves, and Clint wondered how hard it would be to live somewhere now without a silent, omnipotent servant.

He forced himself back to equilibrium, then laughed. Out on the balcony was a patio set, two nicely polished wooden chairs flanking a low table with a stone tile surface and a firepit in the middle. A nice place to sip on a beer on a long evening of city gazing.

The thing on his coffee table was less pleasing.

"You let him decorate, Jarvis."

There was a golden statue of Cupid in all his fat baby glory balanced on one foot, with wings and itty-bitty bow and simpering grin, in the middle of the coffee table.

"The statue was a compromise, sir. The preferred option was an animatronic music box that played Disney tunes as the wings fluttered."

"Your boss has no taste whatsoever."

The apartment door opened after a brief knock, and Tony strolled in, phone headset in one ear and a drink in one hand. "Jarvis says you don't like the statue. I can put up the Iron Man painting on velvet if you'd rather."

"Sure. Give it a good backing, and I'll use it for target practice."

Tony smirked. "So how was your day out? I found stuff. Did you find stuff?"

"Yeah. I found stuff." He looked at the drink in Tony's hand, then looked around the apartment.

"There's a couple of six-packs of decent beer in your fridge."

"Thanks."

Clint restricted himself to one bottle from each of the six-packs, then headed to the balcony, where Tony was already kicked back in a chair.

Tony waved towards the balcony ceiling. "There's a heater, we can sit out here and not freeze."

"Excellent."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The city sounds and the far horizon of lights centered Clint. He set his beer bottle on the table, enjoying the click of glass on stone. "I'll start." The description of his visit to Streiten didn't take long. "It sounds like the medical treatments were very experimental. Jarvis, did you find any details on what Tahiti actually does?"

"None, sir. I found no information on other test subjects or on their outcomes in the data I've accessed to this point."

Tony sipped thoughtfully. "It's probably in the deep cover servers. So there were other patients, and some of them survived, but with edited memories. We should get Bruce in on this, he'd know more about what kind of procedures might be involved."

"Have you tracked Banner down?"

Tony smirked. "Three floors down from here, happily setting up some new experiments into greenness. He came home while you were out, he was in West Virginia, helping at a clinic for Appalachian families. You want me to call him?"

"No, not yet. We should probably keep this as quiet as possible." Clint leaned forward to rest his head in his hands. "I should call Tasha. She always knows more gossip than I do. Streiten said Phil has a team. You can't run a team without support and logistics, someone has to have seen something."

"Why wouldn't you and Natasha be on any team Agent put together?" Tony asked carefully.

Clint blew out a breath. "Yeah. That question has wandered through my mind, too. It might be something outside of my and Tasha's wheelhouse. And Phil kept pushing us as part of the Avengers. He might think putting us on a team is a step back."

"And you're afraid his memories have been so scrambled that he hasn't thought of you and Natasha."

Fuck Tony Stark's genius brain. "And maybe Tasha already knows and is keeping me out of it. Maybe all Phil remembers is that I belonged to Loki. I was still compromised when he went down."

"You said you talked to him afterwards."

"But does he remember that? Has anyone told him differently? Are they feeding him shit and calling him a mushroom?" Did he not remember that he used to trust Clint with his life? Once you start messing with a man's memories, how far would the urge to tamper take you?

Tony let the silence run for a surprisingly long time. "Can I tell Pepper?"

"Does she need to know?"

"They were secret mover-and-shaker buddies. I didn't even know she knew his first name. He got her a Waterford bowl when she was confirmed as CEO, it's engraved with the Goddess Diana. It's still on the credenza in her office, under a little spotlight. She cried when I told her what happened. She can keep a secret."

Clint ran his fingers through his hair. "God, probably better than most of SHIELD. Fuck, I don't know. I don't decide who knows what secrets, I shoot things."

"She might be able to help."

He sighed. "Sure, fuck, why the hell not. Tell her, and make sure she knows Fury still insists Phil's dead."

"She knows exactly how far she can trust Fury. Thanks. I'd like to make her cry for a happy reason for a change." Tony shook himself and resumed his usual asshole smirk. "So you've told your stuff, it's my turn to tell my stuff. What is the Bus, and who is Melinda May?"

Clint stared at him. "Melinda May? One of the most kickass agents to ever see the field. She once went one on one with Tasha for nearly thirty minutes before Tasha got her pinned to the mat. No one else has done that solo."

"So why haven't I heard of her before?"

"She retired from the field. Some bad shit went down, and she's been in the game for a lot of years. She took a desk job. What about her?"

"In a moment. What's the Bus?"

"Souped-up jetliner designed to be a mobile base. Vertical take off and landing, variable direction engines. I want to fly it so bad."

"Why doesn't it say Stark on it?"

Clint laughed. "Because you're not the only designer of cool shit out there, and this stuff goes out for bid. Fury probably didn't want you to install Jarvis alongside everything else."

"I don't 'install' Jarvis," Tony sniffed. "I find him vacation homes in interesting locations."

"And I greatly appreciate my expanded horizons, sir."

Clint grinned at the ceiling. "Yeah, and it makes Fury twitch when he hears your name."

Tony nodded. "It's good for him. So I was looking around the databases, checking for the destination of some tech that I provided Fury, and I found mention of this Bus. It's been put on detached duty, mission classified all over the place. However, I found a partial crew manifest. They've got two fluffy bunny scientists called Fitz and Simmons, who I last saw happily parked in the research section of the Triskellion. I think I pinched their cheeks, they're so cute and helpless. Why anyone would put those two in the field is beyond me. There's also some newly promoted generic agent called Ward, and the pilot of record for the plane is one Melinda May. Which is very intriguing, with what you just told me."

Clint sat up straight. "May is back in the field? But she swore she'd never go back! She had good reason to get out. What could possib-Phil. She'd go back for Phil. You said it was a partial crew manifest?"

"Team leader position conspicuously left blank."

"That's his team, then. Two nerds, Melinda May, and a grunt. What's Ward's first name?"

"Grant. You know him?"

"I know of him. One of the better line agents, he could be great with the right polish. Phil's the one who could give it to him. Like he gave me."

"So he's got his Black Widow clone, his wanna be Hawkeye, and a pair of geniuses. I guess it is kind of hard to find equivalents for a god and Captain America."

"Yeah," Clint muttered, draining his beer. "Some people are hard to replace."

Tony reached over and smacked his bicep. "What it means, birdbrain, is we have his team. If you can't find the planet, you find the satellites that are orbiting that planet. We find the B Team and their Bus . . ."

"We find Phil."

Tony glanced at his watch. "Pepper should be home by now." He looked at Clint. "You have actual confirmation that Agent was up and about and in the world in the recent past?"

Clint shrugged. "The doctor who worked on him said he looked pretty good. I think he's in as good of shape as anybody out in the field could hope to be."

Tony took a deep breath and grinned. "I get to make Pepper happy. I don't get to do that as often as I'd like." He got up and headed for the door.

"I hope the lady I'm about to notify reacts as well." Clint pulled out his phone and looked at his speed dial list.

"Romanoff?"

"Yeah."

"Does she know you saw Agent after New York?"

He ran his thumb across Natasha's name on the screen. "I didn't tell her. After a day or two, I wasn't sure I believed I'd seen him at all. So that's to tell her as well. Hopefully she's far enough away that she'll think a moment before coming over and beating me up."

"Let me know if you need a head start to somewhere."

As if Stark could help Clint disappear better than an experienced spy could. He waited till his front door had closed, then he hit speed dial 1

It went to voice mail, which didn't surprise him, given the hour. Even the Black Widow curled up in her web on a regular basis for some shuteye. She'd been out of town on a trip with Captain America, and she liked to be a little lazy the first couple of days back home.

"Hey, Tasha, it's me. You know that thing I lost in New York? I didn't tell you I went looking for it at the time. And I certainly didn't tell you I found it. But then I lost it again, but it's OK, because today I found out that it's wandering around under its own power and I've got some leads on tracking it down. I figured it was time to tell you about it. Please don't kill me."

It was always a good idea to add that request in communications with Natasha.


	6. Chapter 6

Clint slept on his couch again, this time more to catch the sunrise than for lack of faith in his surroundings. He caught himself smiling as he woke, and he freaked himself out a little before remembering that Phil was alive. Maybe Phil's mind was turned around, but it was easier to get straight with a live man than it was with a dead man.

He rolled off the couch and did a dozen fingertip push-ups for the hell of it. He'd have to see if there was a gym in this place. There was bound to at least be some sort of company health club or something. Nothing that challenging, but he could get his heart rate up.

"Good morning, sir," Jarvis said from the air. "The weather forecast for Manhattan is partly cloudy, with a predicted high of 73 degrees. Are you interested in any stock figures or sports results?"

"No thanks, Jarvis." He rolled into a handstand and started a set of push-ups from there. "Anything uniquely SHIELD related or attributable?"

"Nothing overt, sir. The usual national and international developments that could be explained by covert intervention of many sorts." Jarvis paused. "I have been instructed by Ms. Potts to see if you are available to join her and Sir for breakfast."

Clint pushed himself into a back flip and to his feet. "Stark is awake and fit for company?"

"Sir is awake and amenable to being seen in company."

"Yeah, I bet. Did he, in fact, actually sleep?"

"Yes, sir. Ms. Potts is very adept at-"

"I don't need to know this, Jarvis!"

"My apologies, sir."

"You, Jarvis, are a troll. And yes, I'll join them for breakfast. Let me get a little more presentable."

"I shall notify Ms. Potts."

He showered, dug out clean clothes, resolved to find the laundry facilities-probably some bot carried stuff away-then headed up to eat.

Stark was actually upright at the breakfast table and conscious, though he was clutching a very large mug of coffee as he blinked at the casually dressed Pepper Potts, who was serving food onto plates from a motorized cart covered in heated trays. He turned his blinking towards the elevator.

"Boris!" he declared upon seeing Clint.

Clint paused. "Jarvis said you were awake."

Tony waved a hand. "Boris and Natasha."

"Ah." He looked between Tony and the grinning Pepper. "Are you Moose or Squirrel?"

"I'm Moose."

Clint laughed and nodded at Pepper. "That makes her the smart one?"

"Naturally!"

"Good morning, Clint," Pepper said as he came up and took a seat next to Tony. She took a faintly uneasy breath. "I'd like to apologize for the state of your apartment when you got here, I wasn't giving it my full attention."

Clint didn't have to see the warning look from Tony to know what this was. "Well, it's not like you could stock the place properly, you didn't even know I was coming." Having an Avenger around a man who had sworn off his superhero suit was like having Walter White set up a meth lab next to someone in Narcotics Anonymous.

Pepper's smile was grateful but determined. "Still, no one should have to depend on Tony to fill the gaps left in a household."

"Hey," Tony protested, "I can set up a kickass household. I didn't even give him one robot-though my version of Rumbas kick ass. Right, Bruno?" The cart with the food beeped.

Clint stared at the cart suspiciously. "Bruno?"

"He looks like a Bruno."

Clint accepted the plate Pepper handed him. "If I keep getting fed up here so well, I won't need anything downstairs. I'm bound to get called back to duty soon, anyway. And speaking of being fed so well and getting back to duty, do you have a gym in this place?"

Tony preened. "We have multiple gyms in the place, ranging from the Pilates studio down on the third floor to the Hulk-grade rooms in the sub-basement that Bruce refuses to make proper use of. Though wouldn't you be more interested in the archery range?"

Clint paused in bringing the forkful of waffles and gravy to his mouth. "Archery range?"

Pepper tapped her fork against her water glass. "Before you get distracted by toys, let's talk business. I want to help you find Phil."

Clint almost gave her the automatic "deter the helpful but inconvenient civilian" brush-off, then he remembered he wasn't having breakfast just with Tony and his girlfriend, but with the CEO of a major international technology company who apparently had colluded with Phil on several occasions. "How well did you know him, um, Pepper?"

She gave him an approving smile. "Regular texts and phone calls, occasional visits when he was in the same town. We'd bitch about significant others." Tony saluted her with his coffee mug. She frowned. "Is the, um, cellist still in the picture?"

Being jealous of Phil's hopes for a normal life was petty and inescapable, but he had become an expert at concealing it. "As far as I know, she was notified that he was gone, but she didn't have any official standing relationship wise."

Pepper nodded. "I think he knew he wasn't going to get to have a real, settled relationship with her. But he was grateful for his friends."

Clint blinked at the warm look she gave him. "He talked about me?"

"He said he found you comforting on long nights in bad places."

Surely he was imagining the knowing tilt to her eyes. Phil would never have mentioned anything extracurricular to someone he'd talked about his cellist with. Unless he and Pepper were a lot more open with each other than he imagined.

Tony narrowed his eyes at her. "Just how much did you and Agent talk about, anyway?"

She smiled sweetly at him. "Enough to make you very, very nervous."

Tony's face shifted from half-awake wastrel to cunning genius. "Did you talk as Pepper to Phil or CEO to Agent?"

"I know the difference, Tony. I am well aware when someone is using friendship as a front for something nefarious."

Clint fidgeted with his fork. "This is Phil Coulson we're talking about. He wrote many chapters in the book on nefarious."

Her smile held its own secrets. "I'm Pepper Potts, and I have a couple of chapters of my own."

Tony beamed at her, besotted. "You are the niftiest woman ever." She actually blushed. The charming rogue faded again. "Did he ever try to get an advantage for SHIELD out of you?"

"Fairly regularly, but he was always upfront about it. It became more a matter of seeing where Stark Industries' interests and SHIELD's intersected and looking for the best ways to approach you." She sipped thoughtfully at her orange juice. "I need to double check the references on those three SHIELD plants that we've got."

"We've got SHIELD spies?" Tony snapped. "And you know about them without telling me?"

"Because I knew how you'd react. We've got plants from SHIELD, Osborne, some international firms, and Quinn. The Hammer spies stopped coming to work after the gala, for some reason."

Tony smirked.

"If you've got three you know about," Clint said around his scrambled eggs, "there are at least two more. They may just be there as guards. Stark Industries is considered a crucial asset, even aside from Iron Butt over there."

"Who vetted Natasha, ie, Natalie?" Tony asked. He looked at Clint. "And what did you know about it?"

"I knew I wasn't allowed anywhere near that lingerie shoot and that there was a pool on how long it would take her to shoot you."

"Who had money on never?"

"Phil. He knows-knew-" He couldn't help another grin "-knows Tasha is a professional. How much work does SI actually do for SHIELD?"

Tony shrugged. "Lots of personal armor, hardened computer components, tracking systems, aeronautics." He looked at Pepper. "We did get them locked down on the repulsor engines being proprietary, right? I know I made them as non-backwards-engineerable as I could."

"Fury and his comptroller both signed statements to that effect," Pepper said.

Clint put down his fork and stared at Tony. "You gave Fury repulsors?"

"Repulsor engines. I don't think he can aim his new helicarriers properly to use them as weapons."

"What new carriers?"

Tony started to answer, then looked at Pepper, who was biting her lip anxiously. "So, Clint," he said carefully, "just what is your clearance level, anyway?"

Breakfast became a painful lump. "Seven, officially. Mid-to-high six effectively. Odds of getting the actual clearance back are pretty bleak."

"Fuck, I'm sorry." Tony frowned. "Phil's existence must be pretty damned high."

"That's different. What's your clearance, Mr. Consultant?"

He smirked and lounged back in his chair. "My clearance is Stark."

Clint couldn't help but laugh. "Whatever you can get your grabby hands on."

"Damned straight."

Pepper made a token effort to hide how amused she was. After all these years with Tony Stark, no one believed she really disapproved of what he got up to. "Suffice to say, conversation about Stark technology being involved in SHIELD projects should probably be very general, for everyone's sake. Where do we stand in the hunt for Phil?"

Clint drew lines in the syrup left on his plate with his fork. "Most of my gossip sources in SHIELD have dried up. I don't usually hang out at headquarters between jobs unless Phil or Natasha is around to bother, so I don't have a good reason to wander around looking for breadcrumbs. I could make an argument that I heard a rumor about May not being in her old job, we worked together enough in the old days that I'd be curious about what happened to her."

"Jarvis is tracking the logistics of tending to this Bus," Tony said. "It's got to have a base for maintenance, plus you can't refuel something like that at any airport. Ground crews will chatter."

Pepper nodded and brushed crumbs off herself. "I'm going to do a quiet check on the projects our spies are working on, see who they work with most closely, who they've made recommendations about."

Tony grinned at her. "And this afternoon you can take over the world."

"That should only take an hour or two, Pinky." She went around the table to lean down and kiss Tony. She rested her fingers on his face for a few seconds, and Clint looked away from their silent communication. "Well," she said when she finally straightened, "have fun storming the castle, boys."

"I don't need miracles!" Tony called after her as she headed upstairs.

Clint let him grin foolishly for a few seconds. "She doesn't look like she's contemplating a need for housewarming presents."

Tony shook his head in what looked like baffled wonder. "People who are about to walk on me don't usually spend the night doing-"

"Gah! Oversharing!"

The wonder was followed by a shark's grin, which morphed into a disturbing, veiled concern. "It sounds like Agent and Pepper did a lot of chatting about significant others."

Clint carefully piled his silverware onto his plate. "Some things are significant, some things are just handy." He started to stand, but Bruno the Serving Cart rolled up next to him and beeped. The door on its lower shelf slid to one side. "Dirty dishes in there?" Bruno beeped. Clint loaded his and Pepper's dishes into Bruno's guts, then the cart trundled over to Tony, who likewise cleared up his dishes.

"Speaking of things that are handy," said Tony, who could apparently take a hint when it suited him, "the archery range I set up in the sub-basement probably isn't a real challenge for someone like you, but I could use a professional assessment."

It was that or perch on the railing of his balcony and freak out Jarvis. His arms were getting twitchy anyway. "Yeah, I can assess it from a professional point of view."

Tony clapped his hands and stood up, shooing Bruno off on its way. "Great, sub-basement 3, your code for your apartment will get you in. I've got to go look over R&D reports, remind the minions who actually is the smartest person in the tower. Have fun." He strolled off to the elevator, pulling a device out of his pocket and sticking it in his ear. "Jarvis, is Brucey awake yet?"

"Dr. Banner's express instructions are that you are not allowed to interact with him before 9 AM, sir."

"They're more like guidelines, Jarvis."

Clint settled back in his chair instead of bouncing off to go shooting. It bothered him, Phil talking to Pepper about how much he appreciated Clint. Things had been clear, any encounters between the two of them were spur-of-the-moment, ways of burning off adrenaline or boredom. Clint had figured he was classed as a tool. Highly valued and cared for, but something to be put aside in its place when its job was done. If he was so important to Phil, why hadn't Phil contacted him? Even aside from occasionally helping each other out on bad nights, he and Phil and Natasha had looked after each other for years; when one was in trouble, that one knew there were two others that had their back.

Except Phil had a new team. Strike Team Delta was his past. Black Widow and Hawkeye were Avengers-if the Avengers were ever needed again. Until then, they were just SHIELD agents, and it was Fury's decision on where those agents went.

Should he corner Fury on this? Tell Fury he knew Phil was alive? He knew he had the Director to thank for a lot of his continued freedom and mobility. Clint knew he was uniquely skilled, but that didn't stop a lot of people thinking he had gotten off lightly. Fury had specifically recommended Hawkeye for some of his recent missions, and the successful completion of those had gone a long way to repairing his position with SHIELD. Nearly two years on, he figured he was owed some answers.


	7. Chapter 7

The archery range in the sub-basement was a small dream. All the lighting was on multiple dimmer switches that could be programmed to cycle anywhere from dim light with vague, shifting shadows to psychedelic strobe effects. Factor in the variable air currents, and distance wasn't something he missed, especially for a maintenance range. Clint would bring in some structures to mimic the kind of architectural interference he was used to working around. Maybe the Hulk-designed gym could stand up to some explosive arrows, he could play Balls-Out Tag with Natasha.

Speaking of the devil, and she shall appear . . . Clint was contemplating lunch when his phone gave its signal for an incoming Tasha call: a single, clear crystal chime. He unstrung and racked his bow, took a deep, centering breath, and picked up his phone.

"Did you know Phil was alive?" he asked.

"How do *you* know he's alive?" Natasha asked calmly in return.

They rarely wasted time on pleasantries. "Not long after New York, I spoke to him in SHIELD Medical. He was in agony and asked me to kill him. I convinced him I'd help him see it through. Yesterday I talked to someone who spoke to him a couple of weeks ago. Did you know?"

"I began suspecting three months ago. A Quinjet tech was transferred from the Bus facility to the Triskellion, and I overheard him talking about a red Corvette and the owner snapping at him to not touch Lola."

Clint smiled. "He does have her."

"He didn't say it was Phil, he didn't seem to have recognized him when I asked about the car. He just said a crabby balding man in a suit was being very particular about how they secured Lola on the ramp in the back of the plane."

"Yeah, he does get particular." He swallowed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I thought I might have hallucinated talking to him. I thought he might have died for real. I thought you'd been told but I wasn't trusted enough. You always know all the good gossip. It's only since I've washed up here at Stark's that I've gotten confirmation that it was true. Why didn't you tell me?"

He actually heard her swallow. "I thought Phil had already contacted you and told you not to tell me. He always contacts you," she said softly. It was the voice he'd heard in a small Ukrainian town, when the Black Widow had finally decided to believe Hawkeye wasn't trying to trick her, that his offer was genuine, that she might have really found a place where she could feel a little safe.

He bit down hard on his lip, but he couldn't stop the tears that blurred his vision. "I should have told you sooner. He hasn't contacted me. He said he would."

The unsettling fragility in her voice disappeared. "He said he'd contact you, but he hasn't? And he's out operating in the field?"

"They fucked with his head, Tash. Literally and figuratively. Did you know about Tahiti?"

"Last ditch medical procedure for irreplaceable assets. They put Phil through that?"

He crouched and started curling up on himself, arms around his head holding the phone to his ear. "Yeah. God, Tash, when I saw him, there were things plugged into his brain, his whole skull was open, and he was awake and knowing they were butchering his mind-"

"Clint. Stop."

He took a deep breath. "I caught up to the doctor who was in charge. They took away his memories, apparently the treatments were so horrible they had to wipe the patients' memories so they could cope. The doc said Phil was getting some of his memory back, but that's apparently a bad thing."

She made a thoughtful noise. "Someone has to be monitoring him."

"Melinda May's the pilot of record for the Bus."

"I'd heard she wasn't riding a desk anymore. He'd take more from her than just about anyone who isn't us."

"Why hasn't he called us, Tash? I'm persona non grata, but you-"

"You are not persona non grata, Clint."

"Then why are you Cap's partner and not mine?"

She sighed. "I've been pushing Fury to let you in on this strike force, but Pierce has been pushing Rumlow and his team. It fits SHIELD's paramilitary structure better than an Avengers reunion tour would. And I think Steve prefers working with a more formal setup."

"As opposed to the rampant individualism of the Avengers?"

"Do you blame him?"

"Not really. Does he still try to salute people?"

"Not so much anymore. Things are happening that are pissing him off, and he's kicking at the traces."

Clint smirked and started to uncurl. "This is the guy who got Peggy Carter and Stark's dad to help him go AWOL to rescue a bunch of POWs."

"I think Steve knows something about Phil," Natasha said thoughtfully. "I followed him into a comic book store once, and he was looking at some of the new Avengers stuff. I asked him who he was going to buy. He poked one of the bobble-head things of him and said 'I bet Phil would like this.' I figured he was just confusing tenses and said Phil would have bought the whole set. He got twitchy and said 'I bet he would have, yeah.'"

"Why would Steve know something and we wouldn't?"

"He's a Level 8."

"He's what now? He's got higher clearance than you?" Her silence was amused. "Higher clearance than you admit to?"

"He gets to walk into Fury's office and yell at the Director."

"I've done that."

"Steve doesn't get thrown out."

Clint wondered how much Captain America would be willing to discuss about a highly classified project, especially with someone he'd only actually spent just a few hours with in extraordinary situations. "Would he talk?"

"Maybe to you. He did spend time with Phil, he knows how close teammates can be."

"Is he reachable?"

"Stark should have his number-or Jarvis does. We just finished an op, so he should be available. But like I said, he's feeling pissy about some things. He could even say 'damn it' to you."

"Wow, he is peeved. Op go OK?" he asked after a beat, carefully dropping his concern into the pause.

"Mission accomplished," she said easily, "everyone we care about came home with nothing more than the usual dings. And your op?"

"Anyone who could aim properly could have done it. Damn it, Tasha-"

"Clint, don't. Things will change. We'll get Phil back, we'll straighten this out." The smile came back into her voice. "Where would you go, anyway?"

"Maybe the Fantastic 4 are hiring? Xavier in Westchester keeps sending Fury notes about testing me against his known mutants."

"You just want to fly his Blackbird."

"There's that." He couldn't help a sigh.

"You need me to come up for a visit?"

"Need, no. Want, yes. But I'm betting you're still working angles on that op you didn't talk much about."

"There are a few loose ends, but they wouldn't suffer for half a day's delay."

He thought about it. Sex and them had been a foregone conclusion in the early days, then they realized the sex had been an excuse to curl up next to each other in the dark. They'd dropped the middle man and just went for the curling up, anymore. It was where they whispered their secrets to each other, and it was the only place he'd be able to truly admit how lost he was.

"Come up when your loose ends are tidy. I'll probably be here. We can take a look at that apartment Stark set up for you across the hall from me."

"Look at the what that Stark did where?"

"Show you when I see you. Bye."

"Dam-"

He shut off his phone, winning this round of Who Can Bail from the Conversation First.

He took the stairs back up the Tower, but even knowing Natasha hadn't been hiding things from him couldn't give him the energy to do a stair run up 80+ floors. He tapped out on the 43rd floor and dropped to the concrete next to the firedoor to catch his breath. His phone beeped.

"Are you in need of assistance, Mr. Barton?" Jarvis asked.

"Nah, just . . . younger lungs. There's got to be . . . somebody here not making proper use of theirs . . . right?"

"Stark Industries has a formal policy against vivisection and coerced organ transplants, sir."

"Stark's or Ms. Potts' idea?"

"Mr. Stark's at Dr. Banner's urging, sir."

"I can see that. Whose floor am I on?"

"The 43rd floor is leased to a publishing company, sir."

Clint paused halfway to his feet. "What kind of publishing company?"

"They specialize in political exposes and conspiracy theories."

"And they're here in Starkland?"

"I believe they write off their rent as a research expense. They regularly check through the building's dumpsters in search of useful tidbits. Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner like to leave gifts for them."

"Do those gifts tend to glow?"

"It has been known to happen."

"How many companies are in the building other than Stark's?"

"Other than these publishers, there are a number of accountancy agencies and brokerages who are taking advantage of the heightened security of the building."

It was always good to know who was sharing real estate with you. Between Jarvis and Ms. Potts, Clint was sure those companies didn't have a secret left to their names. He got to his feet. "They'd probably enjoy having a guy with a bow wander through their elevator lobby, wouldn't they."

"I'm sure their aplomb will be unruffled, sir. Though perhaps you could refrain from posing for photographs."

"That'll depend on how long it takes for the elevator to get there, won't it."

"Challenge accepted, sir."

Jarvis, not being a cheater, didn't lock the firedoor on him, and Clint sprinted through the offices and workers to the elevator lobby two seconds before the elevator arrived and opened its doors. The receptionist at the desk barely had time to finish blinking before he slipped into the car and the doors closed. The pair inside glanced up at the floor indicator, then went back to their conversation about rare earth magnets. They disembarked on the 51st floor without apparently realizing who the sweaty guy with the bow and quiver was.

The private buttons appeared when the door closed behind them. "Which floor, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Where's Stark at the moment?"

"Sir is with Dr. Banner in the general lab on the 81st floor."

"Is Banner up for visitors?"

"Dr. Banner's vital signs show him to be calm, and no potentially hazardous processes are running."

"Cool. Take me to the Science Bros, please, Jarvis."

The ride up to Floor 81 may have involved a few more g-forces than a standard elevator should exhibit. Clint braced his legs and grinned.

The "general" lab didn't look very lab-y. The walls were pale blue, the windows had wooden mini-blinds, and there were ferns near the main door. All the equipment on the tables, though, looked shiny and new.

Banner was hunched over an elaborate microscope as Clint came through the door. "Hi, Clint," he said without looking up.

"Jarvis told us you were coming," said Stark from a recliner in the back of the lab. He held what Clint hoped was a Nerf rifle-and it was aimed at the back of Banner's head. Clint stopped before he put down his bow and quiver and wondered if he had packed any tranq arrows for training. He didn't think so.

Stark fired before Clint could react, and Banner flipped up a badminton racquet in the hand that had been hidden under the lab table. The Nerf rocket bounced off the racquet towards the couch against the wall.

"So is it the Big Guy watching your back?" Stark asked. "Or are there eyes under that fluffy hair?"

Banner did not look up. "It's my highly evolved Stark Is An Ass detection system."

"That would explain it."

Clint stared at Banner, then at Stark, then back. "This is how two of the allegedly greatest minds of the 21st Century spend their time?" He stashed his bow and quiver on the couch.

"Yup." Stark tried bouncing another Nerf rocket off the ceiling towards Banner, but the ceiling tile shifted, and the rocket headed for Clint. He caught it easily. "You're not going to give that back to me, are you. Grown-ups always confiscate my ammo."

"I shoot a bow and arrow for a living. I think that makes me not a grown up." The genius billionaire etc. actually pouted, and Clint debated lobbing the rocket right between his eyes. "I'll trade it to you for a phone call."

"You're not actually in prison," Banner said, looking up to fiddle with the settings of his microscope, "though you may feel a little held against your will on some days. You get more than one free phone call."

"You love being my captive, Brucey," Stark called as reloaded his Nerf weapon. "Who you gonna call, Legolas?"

"I want to call Steve Rogers." He tossed the Nerf rocket back to Stark, lodging it in the barrel of the rifle. "I don't know his number. Natasha thinks he knows about Phil."

Banner looked curious but not surprised, which told Clint that Stark had shared all with his science buddy.

"How is the fair Natasha?" asked Stark, who was studying the rocket in the barrel of his weapon with delight.

"She's doing well. Do you have Rogers' number?"

"Jarvis, dial up the good Captain. Label it from Barton, Cap tends to hang up on me."

From the corner of his eye, Clint saw Banner snicker.

"Mr. Barton," Jarvis said, "would you prefer to take this call in your apartment?"

Clint hesitated. "No, I'll take it here, but thanks for asking."

The call rang twice. "Rogers here."

Clint leaned back against Banner's lab table. "Hey, Cap, how you doing?"

"I'm fine, Clint, how are you?" There were voices in the background, and Steve sounded just a touch impatient.

"Doing good. I'm calling because I'm checking up on Natasha."

"Natasha?" Steve repeated, confused.

Throw them off their stride, come in on the information from a direction they don't expect. "Yeah, I talked to her a little bit ago, I wanted to see how she was after that op-which she told me nothing about, don't worry about that. But she's fussed at me for over-reacting when I was bandaging her guts back into her body, so I don't trust her when she says she's fine. I figured I'd double check."

Steve laughed. "Yeah, I've known people like that. She's fine, not a scratch on her. The only ones that got hurt were bad guys."

"You sure? One time she was reporting to Phil, and we didn't know what she was hiding till I noticed the chair back behind her was turning red."

"I promise, Clint, she was fine the last time I saw her. She was strolling out of the hanger and intimidating everyone she passed."

His voice was calm, reassuring, and even a little affectionate. That comforting Captain America voice that would have made Phil give that delighted little fanboy grin. Clint wondered if Phil had all his toys, wherever he'd been stashed.

Patient interrogation had never been his strong suit. "When did you know Phil was alive? Did Fury tell you?"

Stark and Banner both blinked at him, but Clint heard the noise of surprise Steve didn't completely mask. Surprise, not confusion.

"Phil-alive?" Steve said. "Uh, Clint, I'm sorry, I know you two were close, but we all know what happened on the heli-"

"Yeah, we know what happened up there. And I know what happened a couple of weeks after the carrier, when I talked to Phil in Medical, and I know what happened yesterday, when I talked to a man who spoke to Phil a few weeks ago. Natasha knows. She says you know, too."

He saw Banner watching him very carefully. Again, patient interrogation was not his strong suit. But he was pretty damned good at intimidation by tone of voice.

Steve sounded just a touch rattled. "Look, Clint, Fury called it, and he's never said anything different about what happened to Coulson."

"Fury's an expert liar, Cap," Stark said from his chair. "And you're a pisspoor one."

"Stark?" Steve said. "Whatever's going on, this is classified SHIELD business, this doesn't involve you."

Stark shot to his feet. "The fuck it doesn't involve me!" He stomped closer to Clint, as if he could crowd Steve's personal space over the phone. "Fury used Phil's death to push you and me into battle. He played us, and he didn't have to. But he manipulates easier than breathing, and I want to know why."

"Did you know?" Clint said with that flat tone that had made Colombian drug lords try to decide if Black Widow really was scarier than Hawkeye.

Steve hesitated, then sighed. "Yes, I knew. I don't know how they did it, but I knew he survived. About a year ago, Fury gave me a file on a strike team he was putting together to investigate possible metahumans and extraordinary occurrences. He thought it was possible I might run into them and he wanted me prepared. Phil's name was on the list, but Fury refused to talk about it. He let me yell at him about keeping secrets like this, then told me I'd better keep it too. So I have."

"And you didn't think any of us would want to know about that?" Stark said.

"I had my orders, Tony."

"You were just following orders, Cap? Is that really the excuse you want to use?"

"It's not an excuse, it's a reason! For all I knew, everyone else had already been informed and been told to keep their mouths shut, too!"

"So why not say anything!"

"Because I was told not to! You're not a soldier, Tony. But I am. For now, anyway. Look, Clint, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but you know how it is."

Clint nodded. "Yeah, I know."

"I can't tell you anything about his strike force."

"That's OK," Stark said breezily, "we have other sources."

"Yeah, I just bet you do." Steve didn't sound that outraged at the idea. "That's probably a good thing." Stark raised a curious eyebrow. "I'm guessing you're going to try and find Agent Coulson, Clint?"

"Yes, I am. I'm a little worried about what the medical treatments may have done to him."

"I'm not going to be able to help you, there's stuff going on down here that I want to keep an eye on, but let him know I still owe him some autographs." He hesitated again. "Be careful where you go poking. It might not be a good time to be attracting attention."

Stark drew himself up and sniffed. "I am Tony Fucking Stark, I can't help but attract attention."

Steve laughed. "Yeah, I know. You always aim to misbehave."

Stark gasped and clutched Banner's shoulder. Banner likewise looked boggled. "Steve!" Stark said. "You just quoted Firefly! And you compared me to Captain Mal!"

"I do have a list of things to catch up on. Lots of people recommended Firefly. Don't let it go to your head."

"Quick, let's play 'Who am I on the crew of Serenity!'"

"Sorry, gotta go. Just-watch yourselves, everybody. And I'll keep an eye on Natasha for you, Clint."

Clint was remembering why he didn't mind taking orders from Mr. Wholesome. "More like she'll keep an eye on you, Steve."

"I depend on it. Good-bye, all." He hung up.

Stark wiped away an imaginary tear. "Our little boy, who was happy that he recognized a Wizard of Oz quote, all grown up."

"So," Bruce said, "is he Book? Noble and trying to do right but a badass under it all?"

"Maybe," Stark nodded. "Is Natasha Zoe or River?"

"Ooo, tricky. Jayne?"

"Nah, that's him." Stark nodded his head at Clint.

Clint sighed. "My bow is not named Vera." He went to collect his equipment. "I'm going to go get something to eat then hunt through mission reports to see if I can track Phil's strike force. You two-"

The brilliant, disturbing, mad scientists blinked at him.

"Don't cause any mayhem people will notice."

"That's a good rule," Banner said thoughtfully as the lab doors closed behind Clint.

He found the makings of a good, thick sandwich in his fridge and discovered the kitchen counter did double duty as a holographic projector as Jarvis displayed various documents on the care and feeding of a plane the size of the Bus. Maintenance and refueling logs gave him a trail back and forth across the country, with a few trips overseas. Some of the recurring damage reports and resupply lists certainly indicated that Phil's new life was no quieter than his old one.

He started cross-referencing weird news reports for the times and locations he could track for the Bus. "What are the conspiracy bloggers saying about men in black and potential metahumans, Jarvis? SHIELD can't shut down everybody all the time."

"There are dozens of bloggers who focus on secret government organizations and metahuman activity, sir. One called the Rising Tide is espe-warning! Director Nicholas Fury of SHIELD is under attack in Washington, D.C.!"

"What!" Jarvis didn't do jokes, though Stark could convince him to cooperate in minor practical jokes. Something like this . . .

"Paramilitary forces disguised as local police have assaulted Director Fury in his vehicle on the street. The attack is still ongoing."

"Disguised as police?" Clint jumped to his feet, then wondered what he could do, a few hundred miles away.

"Police Department communications indicate no dispatch of officers to the director's location. They are only beginning to respond to the reports from bystanders who have witnessed the attack."

"Do you have any visuals?"

"Mr. Stark is watching them in the lab."

He bolted for the elevator. "Then get me to the lab!"


	8. Chapter 8

The elevator definitely moved faster than building codes recommended. Clint was braced for sprinting at the first opportunity, and Jarvis overrode the protocols to open the doors before the car fully stopped. Clint leapt up over the edge of the floor and towards the already-opening door of the lab.

Stark stood in the middle of a circle of holographic video screens. "You've confirmed it's Fury's SUV, J?"

"Yes, sir, I've tracked back through the traffic cameras for the area and have a positive ID of the driver."

Clint skidded to a stop and stared at the screens. A big black SUV, pockmarked with bullet damage, was surrounded by vehicles bearing District of Columbia Police Department livery, boxed in with police cars actually rammed in against it on all four sides. A power ram was set up on the driver's side of the SUV, manned by people in full tactical gear. As Clint watched, the ram shot into the driver's side window, rocking the SUV but only denting the armored glass in the window.

"Shit!" Clint gasped. "Fury's in there?"

Stark nodded at a side screen, showing footage from a few minutes earlier, of the SUV pulling to the curb, Fury clearly visible in the driver's seat. Seconds later, vehicles rammed into all sides of the SUV and armed men poured out.

The ram fired again, nearly crushing the window.

"He drives a tank?" Stark said.

"Of course. Where's his backup!"

"No idea. Jarvis says there's no communications with Fury's tank. No official chatter anywhere about this, minimal Twitter coverage, bystanders are still in run for cover mode, which is a good idea considering the lead they've been pouring into this."

Clint stared in horror at the live feed. "That next shot is going to break through-Jesus!"

The ram smashed through and was met with a barrage of gunfire from inside the SUV. Bodies fell as the SUV wheels started spinning, rubber catching and billowing smoke as the big vehicle started shoving the car in front of it out of the way.

"So he's still kicking," Stark said, voice calm as he moved swiftly between multiple virtual keyboards. "J, have you alerted everybody who could help?"

"Yes, sir, local police are mobilizing, SHIELD has received the notification but reactions are confused."

Clint watched the SUV fight clear of the cars and speed off down the street, more alleged cop cars in pursuit. He grinned in bloodthirsty glee. The Director of SHIELD was no one's easy mark, even with the massive firepower that had been brought to bear.

He glanced around. "Where's Banner?"

Stark kept typing on electrically glowing air. "In the isolation room at the other end of the lab, wearing headphones and listening to Tibetan monks sing from their throats. He found this upsetting."

"Hell, I find it upsetting."

Fury's SUV hit traffic and was still being pursued. The alleged cops continued firing, oblivious to the civilians all around. Another screen popped up, CNN showing a breaking news banner and aerial footage of the chase.

"Where are my satellites, Jarvis!"

"Still repositioning, sir. There are commercial satellites in range that I could piggyback on."

"Other people's tech, bah. Do it."

Yet another screen appeared, with another angle on the chase. Fury was nearly gridlocked near a bus station. The fake cops had abandoned their cars and were spraying bullets everywhere. The SUV bulldozed its way through the congestion, plowing past cars until it reached maneuvering room. He slid around a corner and hit clear space, pursuit dropping back.

Clint let out a deep breath. "Thank god."

Stark froze and leaned closer to a screen. "What the hell is that?"

The satellite image tried to zoom in. A man standing in the intersection, Fury's SUV barreling down on him. He raised a weapon and fired, sending a small disc towards the vehicle.

Clint went cold. "Limpet mine . . ."

"Oh, fuck," Stark breathed.

The SUV jack knifed into the air, then tumbled back to pavement, rolling and sparking as it skidded down the street. The shooter calmly stepped out of the way of the moving wreckage, busy with his equipment. Light flashed off something on his left arm.

"What's he got?" Stark wondered.

"Get closer," Clint snapped. "Get a closer view!"

The screens flashed through multiple camera views-traffic cams, choppers, satellites-showing all the angles of the ongoing wreck. The view settled on a camera at street level, ATM camera maybe, which showed the SUV coming to a rocking stop on its roof. There was no view of the inside of the cabin. On the far side of the street, a tall man in tactical gear and a full face mask strode towards the SUV, gun in one hand and knife in the other. He flicked his long brown hair out of his face, then ripped the driver's door off with one hand, the shiny hand, tossed it casually across the street, and crouched down next to where the driver would be.

Stark leaned closer to the screen. "He's got a metal arm."

The pain in his thumb told Clint he'd put that digit between his teeth as he stared at the screen. He eased off a little; he needed his thumb. The image was silent. After just a couple of seconds, the man straightened slowly, staring into the cabin of the SUV. His shoulders tensed, then he slammed his left, metal hand into the body of the SUV with a straight-arm blow, actually shifting the multi-ton vehicle a few inches.

Stark hmphed. "I'm guessing Fury got away. J, scan the angles, what do we have?"

The screens flickered again. A camera on the other side of the street, on a higher angle, focused blurrily on the upside down SUV. Jarvis apparently ran some filtering magic, and the image sharpened to the interior of the cabin and the roof on the driver's side, which had a hole cut into it, giving onto a deeper hole in the pavement.

"Slippery little spy man," Stark said with admiration. "I'm going to start calling him Rasputin."

Clint was finally able to breathe. "Jarvis, where did the man go?"

A shift in angle. The man with the metal arm had walked back across the street, to where another big, black SUV waited. A figure in tactical gear stood next to the vehicle, holding open one of the rear passenger doors. The man handed him the bigger of his guns and climbed in. They all left at speed, ignoring the gathering crowds.

Stark began typing again. "Jarvis, scan all the cell phone footage, put together a nice power montage of that guy, let's see if we can get enough to ID our cyborg assassin."

"Winter Soldier," Clint whispered.

"Barton, you're looking spooked. This worries me. Jarvis, records search for Winter Soldier as an identity." Stark turned to face Clint. "Who is he?"

"Soviet horror story. Immortal assassin. A myth. He shot Tasha once."

"He shot the Black Widow and lived? Definitely a myth."

Clint remembered touching the scar and listening to Natasha's toneless whisper. "She was protecting a guy the Soldier was hunting. The Soldier shot the mark right through her." He touched his own side. "She's got a scar right here."

"Yeah, right, there was nothing in that lingerie shoot."

"Photoshop, idiot."

"They didn't do plastic surgery to fix the scar? I don't buy the Black Widow with a big identifying mark."

He'd asked himself the same question, but not all things are amenable to the workings of spymasters. "It took a while for her to drag herself out of the ravine. They fixed what they could."

Clint saw Tony was still skeptical, and he didn't blame him. More typing on a virtual keyboard brought up the shot from the ATM camera, of the Winter Soldier striding towards Fury's SUV, mayhem in every line.

"He's certainly something," Stark said softly. He highlighted the metal arm and enlarged that view. "I've studied prosthetic limbs. I've never seen anything like that. If the Soviets had had the technology to do that, the Cold War would have ended much differently. Give me all the good angles you've got on that arm, Jarvis."

A slide show of articulated metal in action, wielding weapons with no hesitation or clumsiness. There was a red star painted at the shoulder.

"That's subtle," Stark muttered. "And weird. The Red Star hasn't meant anything for decades. A badge of honor? Memento? If found return to?"

Clint shrugged. "Old decal you never bothered to scrape off your used car?"

"That's cold. I like it."

"Pardon me, sirs," Jarvis said. "In brief, the Winter Soldier is reported to be an assassin who has been in service since not long after World War II. The description is consistent, a Caucasian man with a metal left arm. Most reports say the nom de guerre is an assigned title, but other reports suggest the Winter Soldier is somehow preserved for years on end, brought out for singular operations. The gathered reports are available on your personal server, sir."

Clint reached over to enlarge the screen that showed Fury's wrecked SUV and the hole in the street. "Taking out the Director of SHIELD would be a singular operation. Where's the live feed of the location?"

A screen switched to show the street swarming with more policemen and with lots of anonymous people in dark clothes.

Stark did his flashy arm move to expand the screen to nearly fill the room. "Can you tell who is SHIELD in all of that?"

Clint watched for a couple of minutes, a frown building. "No, I can't. Local LEOs, FBI, I think I recognize that bunch from the NSA. I don't see anybody that I wouldn't first classify as somebody else. We don't advertise ourselves, but this isn't covert. Hell, this is an attack on our Director! Somebody should be caring a whole lot." He yanked out his phone and looked at his contact list.

Stark studied some screens. "Hold off on that, Clint."

"I've got to report in!"

More typing and peering at screens. "Jarvis, am I seeing this correctly? There's been no uptick in chatter at SHIELD?"

"Reports are being generated about the attempted assassination of a foreign dignitary at this location. The dignitary's nation has not yet been determined, but somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa is being suggested. There is great interest in the movements of known assassins whose modus operandi include urban assaults.

Clint didn't have a chair behind him when he decided to sit down. "They're keeping an attack on our own director a secret?" he said from the floor. "Internally? From our own people?"

Tony tapped his fingers on his sternum. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was announced in a few hours that Fury has been in a bad car wreck, prognosis uncertain. Sometimes you need people to disappear."

"Who! Who in SHIELD would want Fury to disappear!"

"Where there is power, there is intrigue, and someone who wants more power than they already have." Stark shook himself. "Who would Fury call if he didn't want to make an obvious fuss?"

Clint swallowed. "Phil."

"Huh. Ironic. And after Agent?"

"Hill. Or Natasha. Jarvis, where did the latest refuel we can track for The Bus take place?"

"Over New Mexico, sir, two days ago."

"Then it could be anywhere." Clint shook his head. "OK, Fury's in the wind, still in play. I'm still on daily check-ins to see if I'm needed anywhere, and I already called in today. I could go to D.C., but I'd have to get in touch with Tasha. Fuck, if Jarvis hadn't spotted this, I wouldn't even know this had happened."

"But you do know," Stark said. "So you can watch what they're up to." He got up off his stool and went to a door at the far end of the room. "Jarvis, cut Brucey's music-gently-and tell him the bullets have stopped flying."

The door opened as Stark got there, and Banner stuck his head out. "Apocalypse averted?" he said cautiously.

"Apocalypse postponed," Tony said. "No one we like is dead."

"What about Fury?"

"He got away. We've got lots of potentially upsetting footage you can look at if you like."

Banner quirked a small smile. "I'll pass." He came back to the workbenches and saw Clint sitting on the floor. "Um, hi."

"Hey," Clint said. "The floor is surprisingly comfortable."

"I've noticed that before."

Stark went to one of the virtual screens showing the Winter Soldier. "Have you ever hear about an immortal assassin with a metal arm, Bruce?"

Banner pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket. "Isn't there a Japanese manga about that?"

"Probably. But this one is in D.C. at the moment."

Banner looked at the screenshot of the Winter Soldier, then at the other screens showing bits and pieces of the attack and aftermath. He took off his glasses, pinched his nose, and sighed. "I'm hungry. Fighting off the Other Guy always makes me hungry. If I have to look at war footage, I want lamb tikka masala."

"Jarvis!" Stark declared. "One lunch order from Golden Taj, please!"

"Will it just be the usual order, sir?"

Banner opened an eye to look down at Clint. "Do you like Indian?"

Despite the sandwich he'd had, Clint's stomach growled. "Korma," he crooned. "Garlic naan."

"Order additions as declared, J," Stark said. "To the Bat Penthouse!" He headed for the lab door.

Clint started to get his feet under him, and Banner hesitated, then reached down a hand to help. After a moment, Clint took the hand and the boost up, then they followed the mad billionaire.


	9. Chapter 9

In the elevator, Clint pulled out his phone and hit Natasha's speed dial. For a change she deigned to answer.

"I'm contemplating a massage, Barton, this better be worth it."

"Oh, it's worth it, Tasha." He saw Banner glance at him slightly nervously. "Did you hear about the attack in Washington just now?"

"No, I didn't," she said sharply. "What was the target?"

The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto the penthouse. "I'm with Stark and Banner, can I put you on speaker?"

Across the room, Stark looked up from another holo-display table showing the attack on Fury. He frowned, looked at Banner, who shrugged and joined him.

"Sure," Natasha said cautiously.

Clint hit Speaker and put his phone down on the table. He poked his finger into the displayed face of the Winter Soldier and dragged it to another section of the display. "Fury's SUV was jumped by a full strike force of fake cops. They shot up his vehicle, but he got out of that mess and started evasive maneuvers. He was nearly clear, then he got jumped by a specialist who got a limpet mine on the SUV. Short version, Fury managed to cut his way out of the vehicle and apparently into the tunnels under the street and disappear."

There was actually audible shock in the Black Widow's voice. "There's been no SHIELD alert! Are you sure?"

"I watched it happen on live feed in Stark and Banner's lab. Tasha-"

"Did you call it in? How long ago was this?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes, tops, and no, I didn't call it in."

"Clint, this is Fury!"

"Tasha, we found out about it because the action caught Jarvis' attention, and he zeroed in on it in seconds. Why isn't SHIELD reacting! How could they not know!" He caught himself when he saw Banner walk quickly to the other side of the room and start studying an ugly potted plant. "Tasha, it was the Winter Soldier."

The caught breath was nearly silent, but shrieked Natasha's surprise. "Are you sure?" she asked faintly after several moments.

Clint expanded the assassin's picture in the electronic glow. "I'm staring at an image capture of him from the attack right now. Metal arm, sheer implacability, utter focus. He matches everything you've ever said about him."

"The Winter Soldier is in Washington. He's hunting Fury."

"Yeah."

"Stark and Banner are listening?"

"Good afternoon, Ms. Romanoff!" Tony called. "Bruce is doing deep breathing exercises on the other side of the room. Witnessing assassination attempts is stressful."

"Yes, I know," she said. "I'll get back to you, Clint." The line went dead.

"Chatty little thing, isn't she," Tony said.

Clint grinned. "I know she loves me. Jarvis, give me a list of the most recent serious terrorist groups SHIELD's gone after. Put it right here." He poked the air next to the Soldier.

"Please define 'serious', sir."

"Multiple confirmed attacks, troop strength of at least a hundred, proven resources to work internationally, or a national presence if it's a domestic group."

Stark nodded. "You're looking for the players."

"The Winter Soldier is not an ideologue. He's an operative, an asset. He works to orders, and he either belongs to a group with the resources to acquire him, or he's been hired out. That's not something a podunk survivalist militia out of Idaho is going to manage." The list popped up, and he began scanning it, flicking away the names of groups not up to the task. "It looked like the FBI was taking the lead on this. Their computer security sucks, can you get copies of their reports, Jarvis? I want to know if those cop cars were lifted from DC Metro or if they were wearing skins."

"Mr. Barton, I am not authorized to investigate the Federal Bureau of Investigations."

"Oh. Yeah." He ignored Stark's snickering. "Maybe I can call the analysts at HQ later. Tasha will be checking the usual goons for hire, see who's been hiring. Were you able to track the Soldier's getaway?"

"They entered a parking structure four blocks from the scene and entered a lower level beyond reach of accessible cameras. I am monitoring the building."

Clint shook his head. "They're already gone, changed vehicles or used tunnels."

Banner drifted up. "You do more than shoot things, don't you."

He shrugged uncomfortably. "You've got to be able to find your target before you can shoot it. Who's managing the scene where they first stopped Fury?"

Jarvis obligingly brought up the proper cameras. Men in anonymous blue coveralls were sweeping up bullet casings and broken glass. All of the vehicles, ordinance, and bodies had disappeared. There weren't even any bystanders lurking around.

"It's all cleaned up so fast?" Banner said. "Isn't it a crime scene?"

Clint studied the scene. "Clean up was already staged and ready to go. This is where they expected to finish the job, they already had plans to sweep it under the carpet when it was done. They took advantage of the moving firefight to remove the evidence before anyone else thought to backtrack to the instigating event. Did any footage get uploaded?"

"Briefly, sir," Jarvis said. "Four clips were uploaded to YouTube but were immediately removed. It should be noted that most of the cameras at this intersection and at the final location have gone off line and their image storage purged. I am preventing the digital attempts to disable this camera and the one I'm using at the wreck site."

"Who's doing the shut down?"

"The commands are coming both from a mobile source and from SHIELD."

Clint grabbed his head. "Oh, fuck."

Stark frowned. "Connivance or cover-up?"

"God, I don't know. It could be information control, it could be-damn it!"

"The feds will wonder where the camera footage went."

"Until they're told not to worry about it anymore."

Banner hunched his shoulders. "I don't like this world."

Tony reached over and squeezed a shoulder. "Food will be here soon."

Clint stared into the Winter Soldier's goggled face, wondering what kind of eyes lurked there. "If I start asking questions at HQ, people will wonder. This is being officially downplayed, but someone will notice if I set a proper investigation rolling. That's Phil's-fuck."

"If Fury's out and about," Stark said, "he'll know what to look for."

"He's got to be hurt," Banner said, looking at the still shots of the battered SUV. "He'll be looking for medical care."

Clint shook his head. "Nobody can track all of Nick Fury's bolt holes. We'll have to wait for him to surface."

Stark ran his finger down the remaining list of terrorist groups, barely even hesitating over Ten Rings. "I don't have the resources for investigating terrorists. That always seemed better handled by other people. I'm thinking we need to keep our focus on finding Coulson. Any luck on that, Jarvis?"

"I have found a number of aviation frequencies that are common to all the likely maintenance and refueling stops for the Bus. I am currently tracking them and narrowing them down as I identify the specific aircraft."

"It's a long-distance heavy lifter," Clint said. "Do you know how many of those are on the list?"

"Five of the eleven are in that category. I am not yet certain which are troop transports, simple freight haulers, or multi-purpose aircraft."

Stark looked thoughtful. "Five isn't many. I could put together some drones that could go take a quick looksee. Barton, you got a description of this Bus?"

He grinned. "She looks like you wished you'd built her. But she's not in red and gold."

Stark nodded. "That narrows it down." Banner actually smiled to himself. "Where do we stand?"

Clint looked at his list of potential assassin hirers, moving names into different categories: likely, pissed but mostly useless, unlikely. "We're still in a fog of battle situation, it's too soon for real information to be available. There should be some actual reports available soon. Tasha should get back to us with something. Fury's got contingencies for these kinds of thing, he may be calling Phil back right now."

Banner fidgeted with his hands. "Are you thinking this is something bigger than an outside group making a move on the director of SHIELD? You're acting like there's a chance it's internal."

"There may not be many organizations where the HR departments carry sidearms as a direct requirement of their jobs. The place is full of unstable, aggressive people used to using violence on a daily basis. The ones who advance to high position just get good at sublimating things. For everyone who would follow Fury into Hell and around the corner, there are as many who think the world would be a better place if he wasn't around."

Stark smirked. "It's like an episode of The Tudors with less sex." He blinked when Clint smirked back at him.

"There's reasons the supply closets have keypad locks." He hid his snicker at Stark's combined "euw/oh really?" look.

He was thinking fast, though. If Fury had initiated a plan to deal with a hostile takeover attempt, he'd call in the people he really trusted. Hill, Phil, Rogers, probably Natasha. Never Stark. Binky Smithers down in Facilities. Once upon a time he'd have probably called Clint. But that was before Clint gutted his precious helicarrier. When the shit hit the air intake and it was time to choose a flag, did Fury believe Clint would choose his?

He snapped his hand up to grab whatever was poking his shoulder and caught Stark's fingertip before it could withdraw completely. He managed not to break it. Stark only looked at him calmly. "Food's here," he said.

"Oh." He let go of the finger. "OK." He looked back at the list of terrorists.

Banner cleared his throat. "Eat first, research later. Trust me, peaceful mealtimes are worth the bother."

Stark went over to Bruno the Food Cart from breakfast, or at least its sibling, and shuffled through the bags on top. "Yeah, Legolas, tell me what you think about the range downstairs. What do you want to do to it?"

Well, that was something he'd looked forward to talking about. He grabbed his korma and naan and the Indian beer Stark handed him, and joined the others at the table. But he kept the Winter Soldier's masked face in view.


	10. Chapter 10

Lunch passed well enough, with Clint not talking much but being highly amused by the Stark and Banner Science Bro Show. He was certain that a manic Stark would be the thing most guaranteed to set off the Big Guy, but Banner actually laughed-when he wasn't sighing and pinching his nose. If Clint hadn't personally seen Tony mooning over Pepper, he'd be wondering if there weren't other reasons Banner was so relaxed in Tony's presence.

Eventually, Banner looked at his watch. "Lunch break's over, guys. Genetic manipulation waits for no man."

Stark beamed. "Going down to the lab to see what's on the slab?"

Banner gave him a narrow look. "I'm afraid you're the one who would look good in a corset and fishnets, Tony, not me."

An absolutely filthy grin went across Stark's face.

"Do not show me pictures."

The man pouted like a two-year-old at naptime. In a split-second, though, Stark was checking his own watch and looking like a grown-up. "Yeah, work. I want to look at those SHIELD contracts we have, Pep should have some preliminaries by now. And R&D is probably feeling safe, I should fix that."

Clint shook his head. When you were rich, none dared call it madness.

Stark followed Banner to the elevator, then looked back over his shoulder at Clint. "The tables up here have a better display than what you have in your place, if you want to do more research you can do it up here. Raid the fridge if you want."

"Thanks, man." He waited till they were gone, then grabbed a stool from the bar and dragged it to the table with his displays. "OK, Jarvis, how much display real estate am I working with here?"

Every flat surface in the big gathering room lit up, the Stark logo hanging in the air.

Clint grinned. "Good lord. Yeah, I don't need that much. Give me what's in front of me. and pull up the reports with confirmed or suspected Soldier presence. Even if it's somebody having a nightmare after drinking three quarts of vodka, I want to see it."

Rows of files began appearing. Clint settled comfortably on his stool and began reading.

Several hours later, he had files open on all the display surfaces and was walking back and forth between them, dictating notes to another screen.

Reliable sources tracked the Winter Soldier back almost to World War II, some Soviet superweapon, probably the fruit of one of the myriad captured German scientists. The name was supposed to be a reference to Russia's greatest ally, General Winter, the winter weather that had stymied Russia's enemies from medieval armies to Hitler. The Soldier appeared in reports every few years, with the longest hiatus being eleven years. But that was just appearances SHIELD had heard of, and the reports weren't always reliable. One of the kills generally attributed to him was actually one of Clint's.

The targets did not follow a pattern. There was a drug lord in Turkey, a pro-government legislator in Central America, a separatist in Sri Lanka. It looked like he was working for whomever the highest bidder was, and his kills were often messy. There were near-magical surgical strikes, but there were also blood-soaked scenes full of collateral damage. Clint remembered a scene in Peru, he'd been sent in to take out a Shining Path chief in his home village, but when he got there, the whole village was burning, and the chief's widow was screaming over his body and those of her children. The Winter Soldier looked like some cross between absolute professional and sower of chaos.

It was the politics of the missions that Clint couldn't figure out. An assassin with the skill of the Soldier would not normally be out for bid to anybody who could pony up the cash. The top people always had things they wouldn't do, people they wouldn't work with; even if the Soldier was indentured to some organization, that group would have an agenda.

None of this told him where the Soldier was or who had hired him to go after Fury. "Jarvis, has SHIELD given any updates on their so-called assassination attempt? Or word on Fury?"

"There has been no mention of Director Fury. Updates on the issue are coming from Agent Jasper Sitwell and continue speaking of an attack on a top official of a still unnamed African nation. Most of the African nations have released statements saying none of their officials have been targeted by any terrorist activity, but commentary is focused on trying to decide which of the statements are truth and which are cover ups."

Clint rubbed his forehead. "I wonder why Jasper is pushing that cover story. Maybe that's what Fury wants. Maximum confusion for maximum cover. God, I hope Tasha finds something."

The elevator door swished open. "Wow," said Pepper as she entered the room. "And I thought Tony took up space when he was working."

"Oh, sorry, Pepper-Jarvis, save it, shut it down-"

"No, wait, I'm sorry, you don't have to. That was being impressed, not a complaint." She walked up to the screens, scanning the information. Jarvis had paused in closing down the screens, acknowledging a higher authority in Stark Tower, but this was data from SHIELD's classified servers, and Clint didn't think he should be letting Pepper see this stuff. She stopped at the display of an operation in Thailand. "I *thought* that was awfully convenient," she murmured. "But nobody seemed particularly smug when he died."

OK, so maybe the CEO of Stark Industries had more geopolitical savvy than he thought. But he probably still should have stopped her before she turned and saw the full-on shot of the Winter Soldier striding towards Fury's downed SUV.

"My god," she whispered. "Who is that?"

"Pretty damned classified. Jarvis, please shut this down."

Pepper ducked her head and smiled. "I'm sorry, Clint. Yes, Jarvis, go ahead."

"Yes, Ms. Potts." The screens blinked out.

Clint shrugged shamefacedly. "I guess I forgot whose house I'm in and who gives the ultimate orders."

"That would be her," Tony said as he appeared from the elevator. "You're off early, light of my heart."

She raised an amused eyebrow at him. "So are you-unless you're wandering around up here looking for your favorite screwdriver or something."

He grinned. "You are always my favorite-"

"I can leave if you're going to do that!" Clint said loudly. "In fact, I need a break myself. I'll leave you to your home in peace."

Pepper sort-of freed herself from the encompassing embrace of her billionaire. "No, Clint, stay for dinner, I can control him."

"Oh, please, control me."

"Tony."

Clint had to smile, even while it hurt to watch lovers snarking at each other. "Honestly, I've been staring at screens for too long, I need to get out and move. I'll grab something out on the street." He paused, expecting a Stark-esque innuendo, but Stark had buried his face in Pepper's hair and didn't seem to be paying attention to anything else.

Pepper raised a hand to Stark's cheek and gave Clint a smile. Clint nodded and silently left.

He grabbed his wallet and a few walk-around weapons and headed out into the street. It looked like the workday was over, with crowds of office drones filling the sidewalk. That didn't stop him from noticing the tail that he picked up a hundred feet from the Stark Tower doors. He didn't recognize the woman, nor the man she swapped off with two blocks later. They looked like SHIELD minions, and the bitter ball in his gut grew. He was a fucking Avenger, wasn't he allowed to hang out in the building that still just had a giant A as an identifier?

Dammit, maybe he should just do what everyone wanted and resign from SHIELD. He'd only stayed for Natasha and Phil, and Tasha seemed to be doing well kicking ass at Captain America's side. Apparently they even had their own snark, with Tasha continually trying to find Steve dates and Steve putting her off. And Phil-

Maybe he should let that go. He knew Phil was alive and well. Agent Phil Coulson always had his reasons for everything, and he was SHIELD's man first, despite the orphans he collected. There were bigger things going on, someone big was after Fury. Clint's mancrush was embarrassingly insignificant compared to an attack on the Director of SHIELD.

He always overstayed his welcome, ignoring the signals that would let him get out without blood and tears. Could he be an Avenger without SHIELD? It was always assumed that he'd do SHIELD work unless something Avengers-worthy came up, but alien invasions weren't that common on the ground. Things did keep cropping up, though, like the Mandarin and the Abomination and weird shit Thor couldn't manage to keep on his own side of the fence. Maybe he should call Xavier and the Richards, see what work there might be for a freelance so-called-superhero. It worked for that guy called Deadpool.

The tail behind him paused to look at the display in a cell phone shop three-quarters of a block behind. A guy who had been reading a paper dumped the paper in a trash can and started down the street after Clint.

Fuck it.

Clint ducked into an alley and sprinted to the dumpster 50 feet down. He jumped onto it and leaped up to the fire escape on the floor above. He skipped the stairs and hauled himself up to the sixth floor before his new tail even made it to the alley mouth. Clint dropped flat to the platform of the fire escape, against the building wall among cat-pee-stained rags, and went still, watching his tail.

The new guy looked desperately around the alley, then scanned the rooftops. He spotted the dumpster and the fire escape and scoped that route out quickly. The shadows and the garbage on the fire escape masked the shape of a motionless, prone figure. There was an open window one floor down and an easy jump away from the fire escape. Well, an easy jump for Hawkeye. The new guy stared at that window as he pulled out his phone to make a desperate call. After a call where he did more listening and wincing than talking, New Guy ducked back out of the alley.

Clint didn't move. Motion just inside the window he was lying next to caught his eye. He turned his head carefully. A man in a boring suit, seated at a card table, was staring at him, hands raised above a small pile of white powder, a razor blade held delicately in one hand. Clint waggled his eyebrows at him, then slowly turned his attention back to the alley.

New Guy cautiously leaned back around the corner of the building, scanning the alley. Full points for checking to see if the quarry had broken cover, but Clint was a past master at hunting from a blind. Fortunately only Tasha was aware of that long stakeout where a pigeon had actually gone to sleep perched on Clint's head. Pigeons crapped in their sleep. New Guy visibly swore, then disappeared again.

Clint jumped to his feet, startling the man with the powder, and pulled himself up the last two floors of fire escape and onto the roof. The building backed onto a narrower alley, and a running start made the jump over to the building on the other side easy. A short parkour run brought him to a crowded Jewish deli and a kickass pastrami on wheat with extra German mustard. He rested his mind in the silence of a good adrenaline rush as he ate.

When it was full dark, he took the rooftops back to Stark Tower, until the heights of the buildings became more than he wanted to deal with. Maybe he could get Stark to recreate those web thingies Spider-Man used, that would rock, to swing from building to building. He dropped into an alley near the Tower and strolled out into the street to head for the main entrance. Half a block later, an allegedly homeless man in a doorway jerked and stared at him. Clint actually heard him mutter, "Dammit, Barton just showed up," into the collar of his hoodie. Within minutes he had two tails tracking him to the Tower. These two tails seemed to be closing awfully quickly, so he picked up his own pace to make sure he reached the Tower first.

Jarvis was his usual efficient self. "Welcome back, Mr. Barton," the speaker at the front entrance said, followed by the click of the door unlocking.

"Evening, Jarvis." Clint slipped inside, with the door closing behind him a little quicker than normal. The tails were left on the sidewalk, fuming.

He crossed the lobby to the elevators, waving at Ahmed the Security Guard, who waved back. The elevator to Avengers Land opened as he approached.

"Which floor, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Is the way clear to the helipad? I don't want to bother Stark and Pepper if they're still having dinner or whatever." Especially the whatever.

"Sir and Ms. Potts have retired for the evening. The common floor is unoccupied."

"Take me there." The elevator went up.

He wanted the night and the sky around him to keep the thoughts away. There was nothing he could do on either his Phil-hunt-and he still wasn't sure if he should continue with that-or with what was going on with Fury. This was the worst part of his job, waiting for events to evolve. If he had a target, he could sit in perfect stillness for hours, if not days. But he was a tactician, not a strategist. Give him a goal, he'd find the best way to it. Don't ask him to pick the goal. If he didn't try to silence his brain, he'd keep flailing around in his head, looking for something to aim at.

The common floor was quiet, lit only by some sconces on the walls and the stand-by lights on various electronics. The lights of midtown Manhattan were bright in the windows.

"I still don't have the code for the door," Clint said.

"That will not be a problem, sir." The door to the helipad clicked, and he pushed it open and went out into the night air. "Shall I leave the landing lights on?"

"No, turn them off unless they're needed."

"Very good, sir. Please be careful of the edge."

"I will."

He walked out to the farthest edge of the helipad and crouched down again, leaning against one of the railing uprights for extra stability. The winds were heavier tonight than they had been at dawn the other day.

The City That Never Sleeps was wide awake and bustling. Streams of headlights flowed through the streets, horns and sirens floated up, and very faintly in the background was the murmur of people. He could see some of the theater signs on Broadway, and Times Square was a small sun of its own. He liked the idea of being a gargoyle on Tony Stark's cathedral to his will and ego.

He didn't know how long he'd been in his height-trance when his phone gave the crystal tone of a call from Natasha. His hand moved without his brain having to function to pull out his phone. "Hi there." He frowned at the faint, uneven breathing he heard. "Hello?"

" . . . Clint?"

He got to his feet and headed for the door. "Where are you?"

"Washington." Her voice was faint, more fragile even than the moment when she admitted she wanted to come in from the cold. "Don't come."

"The hell I'm not-"

"Fury's dead."

He rocked to a stop in the middle of the helipad. "No. He got away."

"I saw him flatline in the OR. I touched his body. He was cold."

Clint slowly sank into a crouch. "How?"

"He was at Steve's apartment. The Winter Soldier shot him through the window."

A thousand questions spun through Clint's mind. Had anyone at SHIELD been looking for the Soldier, somewhere that Jarvis hadn't gotten his fingers into? Had the tracking missed him? Or just ignored him?

"Mr. Barton," said the speaker next to the door, "an all-hands alert has just been issued by SHIELD. It regards Director Fury."

Finally, officialdom was admitting things had happened. A bit fucking late. "Yeah, Jarvis, I know. Tasha, why won't you let me come?"

The barest cold wash of a Russian accent tinged her voice. "I'm not sure where I'm going, where I'll be. You be where I know you are, where you're safe."

"Tasha, I don't do safe."

"I've lost Phil, I've lost Nick, I am not losing you!"

He had to put a hand down to the tarmac to brace himself. "Don't make me lose you, either."

She took a breath. "I'll find you, solnyshka moyo."

"If I don't find you first."

She hung up without a word.

After a moment, Jarvis spoke. "Do you want to hear the alert, sir?"

He took a deep breath and straightened. "Better interrupt Stark and Pepper first. They're going to want to hear this, too."

"Yes, sir."

Clint put his phone away and went to the door. He leaned against the handle for several moments, getting his mind in order, trying to get his thoughts around the idea of a fallen colossus and the collapse of his world.


	11. Chapter 11

ch 11

Pepper clutched a long emerald silk robe around her and leaned against Tony, who hadn't bothered tying the cord on his red and gold sleep pants. Never let it be said that the man couldn't commit to a theme. Clint only saw them in his excellent peripheral vision as he sat in an expensive chair and stared at a chip in the flagstone floor.

Jasper Sitwell's voice was flat and angry as Jarvis played the alert again. "This is an all-levels SHIELD priority alert. Our Director, Nicholas Fury, has died as a result of wounds suffered in an assassination attempt tonight. The attack took place at Captain Steve Rogers's apartment. The shooter has not yet been identified. We will release more information as it becomes available. ExecOps out."

Clint kept hearing Natasha's shocked voice saying "He was cold." Fury wasn't supposed to die. He was an immortal, an avatar of Odin, maybe, one-eyed, the better to see the world.

"Who takes over now?" Pepper asked after several moments.

"Hill, probably," Clint said, still staring at the floor. "She'll probably make an announcement in a few hours, when she gets to D.C."

She looked at Tony. "What do we do?"

Tony blinked, then looked back at her. "What do you mean?"

"Our deals were made with either Phil or Fury, we never negotiated with anyone else. Do our deals stand?"

Clint kind of hated her at the moment but admired the hell out of her strategic thinking.

"Pepper . . ."

"I'm sorry." She hugged him hard. "It's not just business for you, I forgot. He was your friend."

He snorted. "Nick Fury was not my friend," he sneered. "He was an annoying, lying bastard who played games with everyone who ever knew him. And he ordered me out of a giant doughnut and then proceeded to tell me how to save my own life." He looked at Clint. "Should we believe this? He called Phil dead, and we know how much we can believe that."

What pretty colors in that flagstone. "Natasha said she saw him flatline in surgery. She touched his body. She said he was cold."

Tony winced. "She is kind of an expert. Was it the Winter Soldier?"

"Can't think who else."

Pepper frowned. "Is that the man in the picture you said was classified, Clint?"

Clint looked at her. "Still classified."

"Yes, it is," Tony said to her.

"Dammit, Stark . . ."

You want to piss off Tony Stark, you disrespect Pepper Potts in his hearing. "I was not kidding when I said she gives the orders around here, Barton. If I know it, she knows it."

Pepper tried a self-deprecating shrug. "Unless it's robotics. Or physics. Or chemistry. Or programming."

Clint shoved his hands into his hair, pretending he couldn't tell they were shaking. "It doesn't matter how brilliant or wonderful or clever she is, Stark. She's not cleared for this. Fuck it, you're not cleared."

"Should have thought of that before you asked my AI to go digging for information on your crush, then," Stark snapped. He broke off, like someone had put her hand on him. Clint closed his eyes and pictured himself on a perch high up on a building, watching the landscape, waiting for his moment, for the world to make sense.

The sound of ice cubes in glass and the smell of whiskey warned him before footsteps stopped next to him and a hand nudged his shoulder. "Here," Stark muttered. Clint pulled a hand out of his hair, and a cold glass was placed in his fingers. He didn't open his eyes as he drained the glass.

"Only Philistines chug 20-year-old Scotch."

He pulled out his other hand to wave a single finger at Stark.

"Likewise, Cupid." There was a slosh of liquid in a bottle, then the clink of glass against the glass in his hand. Clint held it steady as Stark refilled his drink. Slowly he sat back and opened his eyes.

Pepper was perched on a stool, her hair falling out of its pony tail, one perfect bare leg poking out from her robe, and her focus on the tablet computer she held. Stark had gone over to the window wall, his own glass in hand. He leaned one hand against the wall and brooded out over midnight Manhattan.

"I should go in," Clint finally said.

"What are you going to do?" Stark asked.

Clint bristled, but it actually sounded more like a legitimate question, not a dig at his current uselessness. What *could* he do, actually? He was in New York, Fury had died in D.C. Natasha was already on site, and she didn't want him there. Steve was down there, and he was more than capable of pursuing an assassin.

Unless SHIELD really didn't know about the Winter Soldier. But they'd been fucking with the cameras at the ambush site, so they had to know what had happened. Dammit, this was going to end up one of those level 7 or 8 or higher things, and Clint didn't get that kind of information anymore.

He wondered if Phil knew yet. An all-hands alert would have gone to the Bus. Maybe this would bring him onto Clint's radar. This was no time to be abandoning the search, in a world without Fury at the head of SHIELD, the place Clint knew he wanted to be was at Phil Coulson's shoulder, waiting for instructions.

He pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial for his contact officer. Someone would be on that line 24 hours a day.

He got put in an "all operators are busy" queue. He didn't think SHIELD had those. After less than a minute, though, the line picked up. "Agent Barton?" said a female voice that sounded like it had been crying.

They were supposed to wait for an identification, even if they did have caller ID. "Yeah, Agent Clint Barton, reporting in," he said carefully. Procedures were annoying, but they were often a comfort in catastrophic times. Following the rules to the letter gave you something to cling to when nothing else made sense. Maybe the phone minion wasn't well trained. Stark turned to observe.

"Sorry, Agent Barton. It's been . . . You got the alert?"

"Yes, I did. Am I recalled?"

"Let me check, sir."

OK, granted, this wasn't his usual check-in time, and things were a mess, but it wasn't like he was an on-call motor pool tech calling in to see if he was working the weekend.

She came back quickly. "Sorry for the delay, Agent Barton. We don't need you to come in just yet, sir, we're still-assembling a response. Are you still at Stark Tower?"

"Yeah. I'll call back in. Barton out." He hung up before the minion could respond.

"What?" Stark asked.

He shook his head. "Things are in the shit can, but the people who answer the phones are generally able to keep it together."

Pepper snorted, still studying her phone. "There's a quote I read about not ascribing to evil what can be attributed to stupidity-or sheer confusion. The operators at SI were not at their best the day the Malibu house blew up with me and Tony in it." She glanced up at Stark, a trace of challenge on her face. Stark looked back, his expression strained, but he slowly relaxed into a faint smile, nothing but admiration in his eyes.

"You two are going to make me abandon the place again," Clint muttered.

"That might not be a bad plan anyway," Pepper said. "The managers and organizers are still figuring out what's going on. Until they get farther in the process, there's nothing for the go-out-and-doers to do. You might as well go to sleep."

"Sleep?" Stark protested. "Pepper, Fury's dead, SHIELD's in chaos, and you want us to sleep?"

"What else can you do right now, Tony? Nobody over there will talk to you right now, they'd probably spend an hour trying to figure out who you should talk to."

Stark waved his hand helplessly. Clint sympathized. "I think she's right, Stark. We may not get a chance to sleep later, once we have some idea of what to do. I can go into the local office in the morning, see what the rumors are."

Pepper nodded. "And the rumors need time to grow before you can harvest them."

Clint gave her an admiring look. "You're good at this."

Her smile was not altogether pleased. "You think I keep this job on my looks?"

He so knew better than to comment on that.

Stark swiftly let himself be led back to the private part of the penthouse, and Clint went for the elevator. "My floor, Jarvis."

"Yes, sir."

He closed his eyes again and leaned against the elevator door. He clenched his fist and punched at the door, pulling the blow half an inch from the metal, then thumping the door. He kept it up until the elevator stopped.

"Shall I open the door, sir?" Jarvis asked quietly.

He pulled himself up. "Yeah, thanks."

Jarvis let him open his own front door and left the lights off. The skyline was still bright; lights picked out the points of the Cupid statue on the coffee table. He walked over and picked it up, hefting its weight in his hand.

"The glass in the balcony doors is armored, sir."

He took a careful breath. "Is that a statement telling me not to bother trying to throw this through the doors or warning me that it'll bounce?"

"My function is to provide relevant information, sir. I have learned that I am rarely successful in diverting my charges from a course of action they are determined on."

The little ball Cupid was tippy-toe perched on fit so nicely in his hand. He glanced at the door, then flung the statue into the center of the sliding panel. The wings snapped off, wrecking the return trajectory he'd predicted, and the statue bounced off the floor, bending the bow. The door's satisfying 'bong' faded away.

He took a deep breath, then let it out all at once. "Wake me at six, Jarvis. I've got avenging to start doing in the morning."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

><p>No messages from anyone in the morning. Clint scrounged a breakfast from the various things in his apartment, then headed out. His tails picked up him fifty feet from the front door of the Tower, but he paid them no mind as he headed for the subway. He didn't even try to shake them as he boarded a train.<p>

SHIELD's New York HQ was near Wall Street and Battery Park; the floors went below ground nearly as far as they did above. The lobby wasn't as fancy as Stark's chrome and marble and glass, but the security was probably more draconian. Clint swiped his ID four times, had his eye scanned twice, and let the X-ray tech frisk him after her machine shut itself down from alarm overload. She found every one of his hidden weapons-barely flicking an eyebrow when she found the tiny knife tucked up against his balls-then looked him in the eye for a couple of seconds before nodding him through.

"Who's in charge today?" he asked as he stepped through.

"Agent Woo, sir."

"Thanks, agent."

"It's good to see you here, sir," she said quietly as she turned back to her computer to reset the sulking metal detector.

He let himself smile just a little as he headed in.

Clint liked the New York headquarters. It was one of the older buildings, incorporating the old phone building the SSR had worked out of after the war. The elevator lobby on the far side of the security checkpoint was the shiny steel and poured concrete of the postwar building boom, with the SHIELD eagle a relief carving in the back wall, not like that giant free-standing thing at the Triskellion, that looked like an idol you were supposed to sacrifice to.

Today they had cloaked the eagle in black. Cloth as dark as Fury's own coat hung from the out-thrust tops of the wings, draped in a curve across the eagle's body. A glowering picture of Fury sat on a low table in front of the eagle. It wasn't the formal memorial that they'd put up at the Wall at the Academy. Clint thought this was much better, less institutional, more stylish. Fury appreciated theatre.

The elevator lobby was busy, but people paused to look at the display, to nod and give it that moment. Clint stood and stared at the picture, wishing he had the sunglasses he'd worn when they threw Loki off the planet. Fury would have laughed at tears, and Clint blinked fast, fighting them back. He was absently aware that people were noticing him, were stopping to watch him.

He hadn't taken the head shot that would have made Loki's path so much easier. And Fury hadn't put a double-team of armed guards on the secure infirmary room he'd woken up in. When he'd walked with Cap and Natasha to the quinjet, hardly anyone had batted an eye.

Staring at Nick Fury's picture, he came to attention and snapped a salute as crisp as any supervising officer had ever despaired him being capable of, held it for five seconds, then let it drop. "We'll get them, sir," he whispered.

He relaxed and sighed, and people began moving around him again. He didn't look up to meet anyone's eyes, letting the attention drift away. Someone, though, paused just behind him.

"Looks like all your protectors are dead now, Barton," the man said softly.

By the time Clint turned around, four different men who could have spoken were walking away, none of them in any particular hurry.

Well, it was good to know where the wind lay, and he really hadn't thought about that angle of things. But he still had some friends/non-enemies in the place. And anyone who dismissed the Black Widow deserved the hell his life would become.

Still, time for other things right now.

The elevators here still relied on buttons, and he laughed at himself for having to remember he had to actually push one. He wondered how much of the Triskellion's computer was related to Jarvis, whether it was really an AI or just good voice recognition.

People got on at every floor, but nobody seemed to be getting off. The press of bodies got to be too much, and he slipped around a boarding agent and out two floors below Ops, where he wanted to go.

"This isn't your floor!" someone blurted from the elevator car.

He waved back at them as he jogged down the hall. "Takin' the stairs! Healthier!" He'd just been waiting for someone to say something sympathetic or the like, and people always got so twitchy when he sucker punched them.

A two-story jog meant nothing. He wasn't even breathing hard when he swiped his ID at the Ops door, and he allowed himself a smile when the door beeped and let him in.

Ops here was as high-tech as anywhere else in SHIELD. A dozen screens covered the walls, with maps and footage of the attack on Fury. The footage of the initial ambush matched what Clint had already seen, but none of the shots from the final takedown showed the Winter Soldier as more than a blurry or distant figure. One screen showed a schematic of Steve Roger's apartment building, with a line of sight drawn in from the roof opposite.

Clint stayed near the door, waiting to be recognized. He hadn't been called in, after all, and just because he'd been granted admittance didn't mean he had clearance to see everything on all the screens. One of the wandering agents poked Jimmy Woo in the shoulder and nodded at the door.

Woo never showed favoritism for anybody, but had also never showed any indication that Clint couldn't be trusted, once the crazy Asgardian had been literally booted from his brain. That earned him Clint's cooperation and occasional respect.

"Were you called in?" Woo asked as he came up to Clint.

"No," Clint said, "but I couldn't just sit in a cushy room at Stark's while Fury was-" He closed his eyes briefly. He hadn't expected that statement to be so suddenly true. "So what happened?"

Woo nodded for Clint to follow to one of the smaller screens. "Fury's SUV was ambushed yesterday afternoon by goons dressed as DC LEOs. He broke free, but then got taken out by an unknown specialist with a limpet mine." The footage was pretty similar to what Jarvis had found.

"What do you have on the specialist?" Clint asked, watching Woo's face from the corner of his eye.

Woo grimaced and shook his head. "All the good angles on him were compromised, we've got people running as much enhancement as we can on what we've got, but what we need are those geniuses from the CSI shows. Or maybe Stark, if he's talking to us this week."

Clint made himself shrug. "Couldn't hurt to ask. Is this the attack that's being called an assassination attempt in the news?"

"Yeah, we had to put out something as a cover, there were bystander casualties. We don't even have as much on the shooting last night, at Rogers' place. Rogers went in pursuit, but he said he didn't get a good look at the guy."

"Steve Rogers in pursuit mode can't give us any useful information?"

Woo frowned. "Yeah, you're not the only one to wonder about that. All he said was the guy had long brown hair and some sort of enhancement on his left arm. Which matches what we can see on the footage we've got."

Clint looked at the schematic of Steve's building and the shot. "That doesn't look like that hard a shot, not a weird angle, short distance."

"Yeah, for you," Woo scoffed. "Low light, through glass, I'm guessing he had little chance to scout the area."

"See?" Clint grinned. "Easy." He lost the smile. "Do we know what Fury was doing in Cap's apartment? How did he get from his SUV to there?"

Woo scowled. "All Captain Rogers said was that he came home, found Fury bleeding in his favorite armchair, then Fury got shot before he could say much."

"Fury being tightlipped as usual, knew it would bite him in the ass." He saw Woo frown. "What?"

"We just have Rogers' word that's what happened."

Clint's jaw dropped. "You're doubting the word of Captain America?"

Woo fidgeted. "I'm not *doubting*, I'm just wondering . . . if that's all that happened. He's a soldier, he's worked intelligence missions in two centuries. He knows truth is flexible."

"I kind of trust Cap's flexibility over a lot of other people's." He forced a shrug. "But we know where Rogers is. We need to find out about the shooter. Do we have any other footage on him? Anything from the roof after he shot Fury?"

"All the cameras with an angle were off line."

"How convenient."

"Yeah."

"Any luck on finding out how that happened?"

Woo glared at him. "We're still checking. Efficiency isn't the best at the moment. Get your buddy Stark out of bed and make him do some work."

Clint noticed a tone in Woo's voice he'd never heard before, a touch of resentment. He knew there was more than one SHIELD agent who was pissed that Clint had been recognized and commended for his work with the Avengers, but he figured that was the usual jealousy of someone seeing the recognition and not seeing the blood and pain that were paid for it. Clint would be thrilled to be just another really excellent SHIELD agent, instead of a badly done action figure in a toy store window.

Instead of pushing it, he nodded. "You're right, Stark's still a consultant, he should consult. I'll go kick him. Where can he get the files?"

Woo gave a grudging nod. "We'll put 'em on the usual server, he can pull them from there. Thanks," he added.

So maybe not jealous and resentful. Maybe just tired and stressed and grieving, like most everyone else. "No problem. I'll get of your hair."

Clint was almost to the door when the alert signal went off. The agent at comms peered at her screen. "Sir," she called to Woo, "we've got a level one alert coming in from the Triskellion."

"Go ahead," Woo ordered.

The woman read, hesitated, then read it again. "Sir, ExecOps has issued a fugitive warrant for-for Captain Steve Rogers."

"What the fuck!" Clint snapped.

Woo glared at him. "Shut it. Go on, Walther."

Walther glanced at Clint and cringed. "He's wanted for withholding information regarding the assassination of Director Nick Fury. All cameras in the D.C. area are being routed through SHIELD to scan for him, all of his known contacts are to be watched. Force is authorized."

Clint saw all the eyes on him, but he couldn't care just then. "Did SHIELD just declare war on Captain America?"

Woo studied him thoughtfully. "Someone in HQ just did, at least. And he is the only witness to Fury's death."

"And they think declaring him a fugitive is going to make him *more* cooperative?"

"Barton, it's not like we're in the loop here!" He looked around the room at the dumbstruck agents. Most of them had been in New York the day the skies opened and the aliens rained down. "He won't get to New York, not with a full cordon on D.C. But there are people he may call." He turned and studied Clint. "You'd better get back to Stark, Rogers may call him. Go keep an eye on him."

One of the lurking goon squad security people stepped forward. "Sir, Agent Barton is-"

"A decorated, veteran SHIELD agent," Woo finished. "He knows Rogers better than most of us. He should be out looking for him." He glanced at Clint, then very briefly at the door.

A couple of the other security people were giving Clint suspicious looks and were shifting their stances towards aggression. Clint let his smile at Woo only reach the corners of his eyes. "Roger that, Agent Woo." He spun neatly and was out the door before the goons finished their first step.

Elevators were little boxes of deathtraps. Clint ducked into the stairwell and headed up, running as silently as boots allowed. Two stories up, he heard the door below open. He swiped his ID at the scanner for the floor he was on and yanked open the door, then continued running upstairs. The closing door muffled his steps, and he heard swearing and someone fumbling at the scanner before pulling open the door and running through. One set of footsteps hesitated, then continued up. But Clint had a two-and-a-half-story lead, and not many security goons did uphill stair runs for fun.

The stairwell door on the roof came out behind a stack of air conditioning units, blocking the view from the helipad. Too many buildings were too close and had too good of a viewing angle to allow much activity on the roof, but razor wire lined the parapets of the building, just to make a point. Pigeon-proofing, the facilities people said, straight faced. Clint thought razor wire was cute; besides, his custom made utility tool was in his pocket, and it flicked out smoothly into wire cutters. He headed for the parapet that overlooked an executive level balcony on the brokerage house next door and was through the wire before the yell went up that said he was spotted. The story-and-a-half jump was nothing.

He didn't know if force had been authorized to deal with him, but he figured the open surroundings would keep guns from coming out to play. He caught his footing on the balcony, ran along it, and jumped from the end to the wonderfully craggy moldings of the Romanesque building on the other side. God bless the architectural heritage of Lower Manhattan. He'd be toast in Midtown.

He knocked on a random window; the woman inside gaped at him, then slowly opened it to let Clint slide inside. "Thanks a lot, sweet-oh, gosh, I'm sorry." The other women in the restroom-washing their hands, doing their makeup, coming out of stalls, adjusting their underwear-stared at him. "I'll just leave, shall I?" He scurried out.

The building's lobby reached down to subway levels; he took the chance and grabbed a train back to Midtown, then pulled out his phone. He poked the icon that said Jarvis that he'd noticed earlier. "Jarvis, I'm headed back, I may have company with me."

"Understood, Mr. Barton. Are you unharmed?"

"Yes, I am, what's up?"

"There have been several disturbing developments-"

"Yeah, I know. No time to chat. I'll be coming in the front door, unless you've got a shortcut."

"None that will get you to a secure elevator more quickly."

"Roger that. Look for me in about ten minutes. Barton out." He shut off the phone, then shook his head. Someday he'd learn proper phone etiquette.

He treated the exfil from the subway station like any other op: don't attract the attention of potential hostiles, don't run, don't dawdle, watch everyone. Have a weapon in reach. His left hand was in his jacket pocket, next to the hole in the pocket and the holstered Glock on his belt. His right hand was also in his pocket, holding the very illegal switchblade, his thumb on the button.

The streets were packed with office drones and enough regular people that his casual dress didn't stand out. Stark Tower was a block away. It was idiotic that he was having to go on an op footing when dealing with his own people, but there were so many ways this could go to shit. Tasha would laugh her ass off when he told her he wanted people to just chill and talk this all out.

The homeless guy was in a different doorway, closer to the Tower. One of the tails from last night was studying his phone right in front of Stark's front door. Clint used a businesswoman and her big portfolio case as a moving blind to shield him from the homeless guy as he watched the guy with the phone. He must have missed a spotter, because guy with the phone looked up and stared right at him. But Clint was close enough to move in and grab the man's hand and dislocate his little finger, making him drop the phone to the pavement.

"Oops," Clint said, giving the man a feral grin. His boot finished off the phone. The man reached out with his other hand and got a sprained wrist. As he gasped, Clint spun and strode towards the door to the tower, which was just opening to let out a group of smartly suited drones. He ducked around them into Stark's lobby.

The woman at the security desk looked up and met Clint's eyes, raising an eyebrow. Clint nodded back to her and slowed to a normal walking pace, not wanting to attract attention from the businessfolk moving around.

Three of the men in suits, each in a different section of the lobby, turned to stare at Clint. He swore at himself for forgetting that the watering hole all the animals came back to was the best place to lay a trap. He couldn't pull his gun in here, not in the place where he'd been given sanctuary, not without serious provocation.

One of them got within arm's reach before the others. "Agent Barton, you'll need to come back with us to-Ack!"

The security woman had quietly left the desk, come up behind the goon, and thwapped him solidly with a flexible baton right in the back of the thigh. The goon dropped. The other two came in fast, hands going under jackets. Security Woman pulled out a can of pepper spray and got the one on the right full in the face. Clint nearly let her take out the third one, too, but he grabbed that one's arm and flipped him to the floor, giving him a good punch to the sternum to keep him down.

Security Woman gave him a cool nod of approval. "Thank you, Mr. Barton. Tower security can handle this from here." Large men in Stark's uniform were converging on the spot. Clint gave her a delighted grin, then headed for the elevator to the Avengers floors, which opened as soon as he got there.

"Welcome back, Mr. Barton," Jarvis said as the elevator started upwards at speed.

"Good to be back, Jarvis. Where's Tony?"

"Sir is in his lab and has requested your presence."

"Good plan."

Tony's own lab didn't have the soothing paneling and plantlife of the lab he shared with Banner, it was all smooth surfaces and shiny equipment and occupied the entire floor. Stark's famous robot arms tootled around the giant room, winding around drafting stations, welding stations, and a set of giant mills. Tony himself sat on a stool in the middle of the room, frowning at a physical screen Clint couldn't quite see as he jogged in through the door Jarvis opened for him.

"Dude, your security people kick ass!"

"They'd better," Tony said, not looking up. "Barton, what the fuck is going on?"

Clint deflated. "Christ, I don't know. Did you hear about the warrant on Rogers?"

"Yes, I did."

"Fury must have told him something they really want to know, but Cap's the last guy to be obstructing an investigation. I don't know why they just can't ask him-"

Tony swung the screen around. "There's some footage you really need to see."

Steve in one of the glass elevators at the Triskellion, with his frowny-thoughtful face on. Rumlow and his squad get on, chat briefly. More people get on, no one gets off. Big guys. Steve looks around slowly, thoughtfully, stares at one of them. He does that half-shrug, settle himself on his feet thing. "Before we begin," he says snarkily, "does anyone want to get out?"

And the elevator explodes.

"Jesus fuck," Clint breathes.

In barely a minute, Steve's the only one standing, and he stomps on his shield to bounce it into his hand and uses it to slice off the cuff they'd managed to get on him.

"Gosh," Clint says, staring.

"Yeah," Tony grins. "Every now and then, when you're talking to him, you get distracted by the fact that he's such an apple pie doofus. Then you get reminded why he deserves the title." He nodded at the screen. "But keep watching."

Steve opens the elevator doors, then jerks back and smashes his shield against the cables holding the elevator. The car drops, then stops. He pries open the doors, then shoves them closed again. He takes a quick look around, then focuses on the glass wall and settles the shield on his arm.

"Oh, fuck no," Clint breathes.

"Oh, fuck yes."

Steve braces his shoulder against the shield and charges the glass. It shatters, and Captain America plummets towards the ground below. Before Clint can ask, the feed switches to an atrium camera just as Steve smashes through the glass roof and into the concrete. And then he staggers to his feet and runs away.

Clint gaped at the screen. "Oh my god! How many bones did he just break!"

Tony shook his head. "Probably crush damage to the shoulder, any number of cracks. But that's what he does, he keeps getting up."

"Do we know where he went? That was an authorized assault, they must have shut down the complex."

"Jarvis, next clip!"

The entrance to the garage came up, alarm lights flashing and the big spiked barriers rising up. Steve Rogers' motorcycle roars out over the barriers like he'd been watching Steve McQueen in The Great Escape-or maybe Steve McQueen had been watching Captain America. Clint's glee disappeared when he saw a quinjet roar around, bring all guns to bear, and open fire.

"They're shooting at him! What the fuck!" Tony flapped a "hush now" hand at him.

And Steve *accelerates* towards the jet, smoothly dodging the gunfire, then he *jumps* off the fucking motorcycle *onto* the jet, where he proceeds to beat the thing silly with his shield before jumping back off the thing as it pancakes into the bridge. He pauses a moment to contemplate the carnage, collects his shield, then jumps off the bridge into the river, disappearing from view.

Clint gaped a moment. "That was awesome!"

Tony actually smiled. "Yes. Yes, it was. And it doesn't change the fact that the force SHIELD authorized to use on him is apparently lethal force."

"Fuck. Yeah." He took a deep breath. "I'm guessing the alert went out after Cap hit the water."

"Just a couple of minutes after. I hit the feeds for a reason as soon as the alert went up." He turned on his stool to face Clint. "Why are they doing this? What did they tell you? And why were you coming in hot? Dummy, bring our guest a chair!" he called as Clint looked around.

Clint blinked as one of the robot arms trundled up with a giant green bean bag in its claw. It dropped the bean bag next to Clint, patted it with the claw, then raised up to spin its claw at him and beep cheerfully. "Uh, thanks." He looked at Tony.

"What, you think I'm going to risk them on actual furniture? Sit! Do you reject the hospitality of the robot tribe?"

He'd sat on worse in the name of gracious hospitality. He wiggled his butt in the beans till he was comfortable. "I'm thinking they were trying the full court press in the elevator thing on me, too. People kept getting on, no one was getting off, but I got claustrophobic and bailed before they did anything. Some security goons objected to me leaving after the alert went out-I didn't hear anything about Cap taking Rumlow and his buddies to school-and Rumlow looked too damned pleased to be shoving a shock-ton into Steve's gut."

Tony nodded.

"Jimmy Woo pretty much ordered me out of HQ to try and find Steve, and security came after me. I lost them, but they picked me up out front of the Tower, then there was the welcoming committee in the lobby itself."

"Yeah, I watched that. Matilda was getting bored in the Secret Service and was happy to hire on." Tony reached over to poke the footage of Steve in the elevator. "So, SHIELD has turned on Captain America. What did Fury tell him that they don't want getting out?"

"Fury went to him for a reason. I know Steve had no problem going in and yelling at the Director if he thought it was necessary, and Fury let him. Without Phil, I think he was low on people he could count on to tell him when he was being an ass."

Tony grimaced. "And Cap has never been shy about being willing to point that out to people. But whatever is going on here is not a general SHIELD policy. You had help getting out, and that alert came out after the fact of Rogers objecting to SHIELD's methods. He would not have resisted anything he believed was a legitimate taking into custody."

Clint nodded. "They figured they'd be able to contain him and get him to talk, probably without any of this going public except for whatever goons were brought in to do the dirty work."

"But people keep underestimating Avengers."

Clint slapped his thighs and showed off his core strength and flexibility by levering himself out of the bean bag without using his hands. "Thank god for that. It's been a hell of a morning, I'm going to see what there is for an early lunch."

Tony glared, but followed.


	12. Chapter 12

Ch 12

As they scrounged together lunch in the main kitchen, Tony did a quick scan of various news outlets. "Nothing on the broadcasts about a small plane crash in the middle of Washington, D.C. It's not like that bridge is cloaked."

"I think this is actually a case of things happening too fast," Clint said, pilfering an entire box of roma tomatoes for himself. "The quinjet didn't get much altitude while Cap was pummeling it."

Tony frowned at him. "You're enjoying that a whole lot."

"Cap beat up a plane! Him and his shield took out a 600 million dollar aircraft, and he walked away."

"And a three million dollar motorcycle."

Clint choked. "Excuse me? How much?"

"Three million dollars. I customized that thing for him myself, and the cost does not include my not-insubstantial consulting fees. There was nothing standard on that thing, the materials research alone-and he just-Jarvis, make a note, Steve Rogers never drives one of my cars."

"Noted, sir."

Clint couldn't help his smile. "It was still very cool."

Tony shrugged. "Yes, it was very cool. A very dramatic way to declare war on a major American law enforcement organization. Does he even know how to evade surveillance?"

"He's better at this stuff than you give him credit for. Natasha has been willing to work with him for months."

"Fair point." Tony finished assembling his bowl of edibles and leaned back against the counter. "Jarvis, any luck tracking Cap's phone?"

"No, sir, Captain Rogers' phone has either been turned off or been destroyed."

"And the trackers in his motorcycle will put it in a sad pile of junk on the bridge."

"Confirmed."

"And his uniform?"

"His uniform is at the bottom of the Potomac. I believe it is safe to assume that Captain Rogers is not in it."

Tony grinned. "Steve Rogers stripped down in the river and walked out onto the riverbank in our nation's capital in all the glory science gave him, and it's not all over YouTube? I disbelieve!"

"I believe Captain Rogers' underwear is not being tracked, sir, therefore it is unlikely that he appeared in public nude."

"A loss to us all."

"Wait," Clint said, "there were trackers in his uniform? How do you know? How did he know?"

Tony blinked at him. "I think it's presented as some sort of recovery system in case an agent needs an extraction but can't communicate his position. Isn't there some sort of beacon in your uniform?"

"Yeah, but I have to activate it-fuck. I don't, do I."

"No. So I'm guessing you weren't aware of the trackers in your boots, your bow, and your quiver, either."

He put the milk carton down fairly firmly on the counter. "They messed with my bow?"

"Jarvis disabled all of them when they came into his sphere of influence." Tony shrugged. "We disapprove of surveillance equipment we didn't install."

Objectively, trackers made a hell of a lot of sense for people who might need rescued but couldn't yell for help. But it was supposed to be active tracking, activated on a case by case basis. Clint felt like an idiot for not thinking there'd be a way to trigger those trackers remotely. Phil and Fury had had an ongoing argument about subcutaneous trackers for high-level agents, in case of capture, but Phil said he refused to be chipped like somebody's poodle.

"This is the freedom vs. safety thing, isn't it. The things we think are protecting us can be used against us."

"Yep. Probably some of the fine print in your contract said you were perfectly happy with SHIELD tracking your movements at their discretion."

Clint chewed on a few more tomatoes as he thought. "That pile-on in the elevator was not put together in a couple of minutes. That was a lot of heavy hitters, and they had specialized tech. So something happened where the organizer of all this figured he'd have to have a massive take down on deck in case things didn't go his way. But Steve didn't look like he was expecting that kind of trouble until they started surrounding him."

"Kind of like having a clean up crew ready to move in after an assassination?"

"God. Someone in SHIELD is dirty. And we've got enough people who just say 'yes, sir!' that they'll draw down on Captain America if they're told to."

"Not every minion is as cool as the ones in 'Despicable Me.'"

"You gonna paint your next robot yellow and name him Kevin?"

"Dummy would murder it. He wants a goggle to go over his camera for dress-up occasions."

Clint stared at Tony, looking for the signs that this was yet another joke. Tony stared back, smiling faintly, but with no indication that he did not indeed hold dress-up occasions for his robots.

"Sometimes we have cake," Tony added.

"You're a troll."

"But with cake." He clapped his hands. "But this is doing nothing to find our fearless leader, who beat up a plane and then jumped into a river to take off his clothes, god bless him. Jarvis-"

"I beg your pardon, sir," Jarvis interrupted, "but there is a video call for you, from the Triskellion. Secretary Alexander Pierce would like to speak with you."

Clint dropped his fork.

Tony blinked. "Well, that's interesting."

"Secretary Pierce calls you up-and it's just interesting?"

"It's not like he's done it before! I've only ever talked to him at horrible Washington cocktail parties!"

"I've only ever talked to him once, and that was at a formal SHIELD ceremony where he shook my hand and said 'Keep up the good work, Agent Barton!'"

"Sir," Jarvis reminded, "he is waiting."

"Crap, yeah." Tony poked at his hair. "Give me a mirror." A screen popped up in front of him, showing himself. "OK, hair is attractively tousled, t-shirt is clean and for an appropriately retro band, nothing in the teeth, nothing incriminating in the background."

Clint half-way stood up. "You want me to leave?"

"Not on your life. Give me what you know about him."

"Uh, he's a politician, his smiles look like the ones you use on the press, Fury worked with him for years and would occasionally take his advice. He's the on-site representative of the World Security Council at SHIELD."

Tony settled onto a stool, and his demeanor changed from manic super-genius talking about geek movies and pet robots to billionaire philanthropist international businessman. He nodded at a couch across the room. "You'll be out of the camera angle over there. Jarvis, keep him off the pickups."

"Yes, sir. Secretary Pierce coming on the line."

Another screen popped up, this one showing the urbane figure of Alexander Pierce, who was perched oh-so-casually on the corner of his desk. He smiled warmly at his own camera. "Mr. Stark, thank you for taking my call."

Tony sent a press-conference smile back. "Not at all, Secretary Pierce. I was just going over some of the documents I have covering our contracts with SHIELD. Without Fury . . ." He shrugged sadly.

Pierce's smile froze a little. "Ah, so you've already heard the bad news."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Tony looked chagrined. "Was I not supposed to know about that? I talk to lots of people in SHIELD, and I got some emails this morning."

Pierce sighed and waved a weary hand. "No, it's not a problem. It's not something we want to make common knowledge, but you're a SHIELD consultant and one of our major contractors. Plus you had a personal relationship with Nick-with Director Fury."

Tony nodded solemnly. "Yeah. I think I'm going to miss the annoying bastard." That actually sounded sincere. "But what can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?"

Pierce folded his hands together and stared into the camera seriously. "During the investigation into Nick's death, we discovered that Captain Steve Rogers is withholding vital information. Nick went to Captain Rogers' apartment last night, and Captain Rogers won't tell us what they talked about."

"What do you think they talked about?"

"I'm afraid Nick may have let his respect for the Captain America title sway his judgement, and I think he told Captain Rogers about a developing project designed to make risk assessment and intelligence analysis more efficient."

"Better data analysis? Nobody appreciates efficient data handling more than me, but what s so important that you had to call me personally?"

"It's more than just . It's an attempt to get ahead of the curve on threats both domestic and worldwide. We're trying to get better projections in place so we can stop things like 9/11 or even, well, the Mandarin." Pierce gave an apologetic smile. "We shouldn't have to play catch-up, we should be seeing the game before it starts. If we see where the trouble is likely to start, we can go in and stop it. Entire regions could come off a war footing and put their resources into peace and productivity. If aid workers didn't have to keep looking over their shoulders, they could do a better job of helping communities." He broke off with an embarrassed laugh. "Sorry, I get carried away."

"No," Tony said thoughtfully, "you haven't said anything that hasn't occurred to me. And you think Captain Rogers objects to this?"

"Oh, absolutely not, Captain Rogers has more than demonstrated his dedication to protecting people. But I'm afraid he's still looking at things in black and white, without appreciating that the modern world is more grey. We need to find him and tell him that he can't just go out in public and be outraged without it causing a lot of trouble."

Tony frowned. "Find him? Have you lost him?"

Pierce gave a mea culpa shrug. "Between what happened to Nick and his dismay over our policies, I think he took some things I told him this morning the wrong way. I doubt he trusts SHIELD much at the moment, but he may talk to a fellow Avenger."

Tony's eyes narrowed. "You think he'll call me."

"Of all the people he knows in the 21st century, you probably have the best grasp of how the government and the private sector interact, and you can explain the various subtleties. You understand how delicate international relations can be, you can answer his questions and point out the pitfalls of his more-direct approach."

"Yeah," Tony said, looking away to fight a smile, "Cap is rather famous for his 'the only way out is through' philosophy."

Clint put a hand over his mouth to stifle his delighted grin of memory.

"But OK," Tony went on, "if he calls me I'll try to talk him down. Maybe get him to come up here and we can drink a toast to Nick Fury. The Avengers should throw the man a wake, he made us what we are. Besides, if it s worth it to you to take the time to deal with this personally, Mr. Secretary, I can make an effort to talk to Steve."

Pierce nodded in acknowledgement. "A lot of things go more easily if you just deal with the man at the top. Thank you for your time, Mr. Stark."

"And thank you for yours, Mr. Secretary."

The screen flicked off.

"Wow," Clint said, "if I didn't know what had happened to Cap, I'd believe him."

Tony nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, me too."

Clint sat back and studied Tony. Pierce talked to prime ministers and ambassadors and the nameless people who told prime ministers what to do. On the morning when SHIELD declared war on the embodiment of America's old-fashioned ideals, Pierce took the time to make a personal phone call to Tony Stark. Yeah, Captain America might call up his brother-in-arms Iron Man for some help, and Pierce would want to get Iron Man on his side, but that wasn't the point of the conversation.

"He was trying to get you on his side, and for more than just corralling Steve."

"Yep."

"Whatever he was talking about, there has to be more to it than gathering intelligence and finding out who the bad guys are before they can cause shit. That's what we've been doing all along."

Tony nodded, still staring off. "There's something a whole lot more pro-active involved. Look for the people who you think are going to be trouble before it even starts."

Clint frowned as the ramifications began unrolling in his head. "Have they talked to you about this project before? Why bring it up now?"

"They're cutting off Cap's avenues of assistance, and they knew they'd have to give me a good reason to not back up an Avenger. But no, this is the first I've heard about this. They probably weren't sure which side I'd come down on. I'm never quite sure myself where I stand on order vs. chaos. Fewer people get blown up in an orderly world, but you need chaos to take down the dictators who try to force order down people's throats. He made a thoughtful noise. The problem has always been execution. Whose hand do you trust to make the decisions? And who might that hand pass the power on to?"

"Except people aren't statistics that you can manipulate however you want," Clint said, his stomach tying in a knot as he listened to the cool, scientific analysis.

"No, they aren't. That kind of thinking discards the outliers, tries to negate the statistical anomalies that make theories messy. You have to be willing to throw away the interesting things that happen on the ends of the Bell curve." Tony looked at Clint and smiled faintly. "Statistically, I should have died of a wrecked liver or multiple mutated STDs a decade ago."

Clint fought his own smile of relief. "I've got lots of statistics that say I should have ended up in a police morgue years ago."

"Except you ended up in the interesting parts of the Bell curve, where the extraordinary people are."

Clint shrugged and looked away. "Extraordinary fuck-up."

"You are still way behind me on the epically stupid things you've done with your life. Though I have had far more resources at hand to make bad use of." Tony got off his stool and went to the row of liquor bottles. He held one up and looked quizzically at Clint, who shook his head. He poured out only half a glass of brown liquid, capped the bottle, put it away, then went back to his stool. "Extraordinary people are bad for business, they're unpredictable and they argue with you instead of quietly buying what you want to sell to them, whatever it may be. But that's why we need the extraordinary people. That's where the heroes are." He tipped his glass towards Clint before drinking.

"If I'm a hero, what are you?" Clint snapped. He would never be happy with that title.

Tony stared into his glass. "Unfairly lucky. Stubborn. Narcissistic enough to think I can make a difference in the world."

"So hero is a fair cop, then."

Tony actually snickered. "No, Steve's the hero. The rest of us are just trying to keep up." He drained his glass. "And we need to find him. He's seen something that makes the Powers that Be twitchy to the point of fighter planes, and that kind of twitchy makes a mess."

"You think this is why Fury was killed?"

"Probably. But whether someone wanted to stop the plan or to stop Fury from interfering with the plan, I don't know."

Clint got up to prowl. "OK, just to put this out there-we're assuming Steve's on the side of the angels, here, right, and we should be countering whatever SHIELD is doing to stop him from doing-whatever he's up to?" He shrugged at the look Tony gave him. "SHIELD has had my back for a long time. I'm barely getting over being a traitor under Loki's command. I want a good reason before I do it in sound mind."

Tony nodded and leaned back. He held out one hand. "Captain America." He held out the other. "SHIELD. Which one do I trust when the chips are down?" He raised the first hand. "Cap, against all odds, appears to actually fulfill those stories I've been told all my life, told by people who I personally know didn't and don't take shit from anybody. He was the only thing Dad and Aunt Peggy agreed on, and they couldn't be in the same room for more than 30 seconds without yelling at each other." He raised the second hand. "SHIELD, founded by my dad and Aunt Peggy, but with a lot of other people's fingers in the pie. Eventually run by Nick Fury, who probably lied to himself about what he had for breakfast."

He tossed that hand over his shoulder. "I'm picking Captain America. Your results may vary."

Clint wandered over to a stair railing and hoisted himself up on it, leaning into the angle and balancing on the narrow rail. He barely noticed Tony's squeak of protest. It was his own version of Rodin, his personal Thinker pose.

He liked Steve Rogers, respected Captain America. But he d sworn an oath to SHIELD. The organization had given a home and refuge to him and to Natasha. He owed them allegiance, if not loyalty. The people of SHIELD had had his back for a long time, they'd pulled his ass out of the fire when he was sure the legend of Hawkeye was coming to a properly disastrous end. The woman running the scanner that morning wasn't the only one to nod respectfully when they saw him, even after Loki. Even if she was balanced by the fuckhead who'd whispered to him.

How much of SHIELD knew that Phil Coulson was still in play? Was that one of Fury's big secrets? And what would SHIELD become without Fury? Obviously an organization that used lethal force against the organization's darling. Would Clint get official orders to hunt down Steve Rogers? To pit his extraordinary assassin skills against the Super Soldier? Would they sic the Black Widow on Captain America? God knows he'd had to go up against former comrades in arms before, it wasn't the first time a SHIELD agent had gone bad. But this time-

"God fucking dammit!"

Clint nearly fell off the railing at Tony's shout. "What!"

Tony was staring at another screen, reading some text. "They've put guards on Peggy! There's an email to the director of her facility saying that due to certain security concerns, SHIELD is placing guards on her room. If they get her riled up and worried about Steve, I'm going to have their balls!"

"Why are you monitoring Peggy Carter's nursing home?"

"Who the fuck do you think is paying for her care? She was the only sane face at my parents' funeral and she sent me letters telling me I was being a shithead." He glowered at the screen. "I hated her for reminding me of all the hero stories they told me about Dad, but she kept begging me not to end up like him. She called me Howard the last time I went to see her," he added. "She said it looked like I was finally taking care of myself and maybe having a son was doing right by me."

"Aren't her kids taking care of her?"

"The bill they're paying every month is labeled maintenance and care. They're paying for the lady who goes in and reads to her every day. And she's not cheap. So at least they're think they're doing something."

Clint shook his head. "Steve wouldn't try to contact her, anyway, not if he's on the run."

"Yeah, but if he hears about it . . ."

"Fucking psychological combat."

Tony gave him an even look. "What, it's not part of the usual gameplan?"

"Against a terrorist, yes! And if they're going to classify one of our own that way, evidence needs to be produced. This is a level one warrant, something concrete should have already come up." He grabbed his hair in frustration. "I hate politics."

"Steve's not going to go anywhere near her," Tony said. "And he's not going to call me, he barely sends me a card at Christmas. Real dead-tree Christmas cards, signed Steven Rogers."

Clint had gotten Christmas cards, too. "He'll call Tasha, if he calls anybody."

Tony nodded. "Which is not a bad idea. Every now and then I find her having drinks with Pepper. Malibu, New York, Paris. They whisper and laugh together and give me thoughtful looks when I stumble across them. I bribe her with toys to keep her from killing me."

"You wouldn't be the first one." Clint looked around the room at the various screens. "There's shit-all we can do at the moment, is there."

"At least as far as the very satisfying bashing-people-in-the-head activities. I'm thinking I might wander over to the New York HQ and see about getting an audit of what they're doing with my tech." He looked at Clint. "You can't come. You keep your nose inside where they can't grab it."

Clint tried to pout in a manly fashion. "Great, stuck inside with nothing to do."

"On the contrary, my dear Hawkeye. I've got three SHIELD goons in my security offices that I don't know what to do with. Someone should at least chat with them, see what their instructions were and all that." His grin was evil. "I don't like government officials running operations on my private property without warning me."

"Dude, you just might be getting a Christmas card from me for this."

"Don't get carried away. Just go chat with Matilda about what to do with those guys."

"Is she your head of security?"

"Her title is Chief of Secure Personnel Interactions. Jarvis is general head of security, though he doesn't appear on the Org Chart."

"Of course you are," Clint said to the ceiling. "My apologies. And Matilda is in charge of dealing with those inconvenient organic entities that mess up your floors."

"Indeed, sir," Jarvis said. "Ms. Zanandrea is quite effective at dealing with unwanted visitors."

Tony got to his feet. "Go have fun intimidating the invaders. I'm going to go put on my billionaire industrialist clothes and wreck somebody's will to live."

"Uh, Stark?" Tony paused on his way up the stairs and looked at Clint. "Be careful, man. Shit's being weird."

The mad scientist was all over the grin. "Just because I'm unarmored doesn't mean I'm unarmed."

Clint's shoulders relaxed. "Good to know. Have fun storming the castle." Tony saluted and continued up the stairs. "OK, Jarvis, lead me to the security offices."

"To the first sub-basement, then sir."


	13. Chapter 13

The elevator lobby of the first sub-basement was refreshingly utilitarian after the slick futuristic polish of the public areas and the penthouse. The carpet was generic but top-quality, the Stark Industries logo on the wall wasn't too ostentatious, and the two chairs in the waiting area actually looked comfortable. The various magazines on the little table all had Pepper on the cover.

There was a plexiglas window at the far side of the receiving area from the elevator. The kid in the Stark Security uniform seated behind the glass looked up, then went goggle-eyed. He looked just like the kids at the circus when they saw the Amazing Hawkeye after a performance.

For a change, the reaction didn't make Clint want to pull out his asshole persona-no, Natasha, it wasn't his default personality. He smiled as he strolled up to the window. "Hi, there. I'm here to check on those three goobers that caused a ruckus in the lobby this morning."

"Oh, yes, sir, Agent, um, Mr. Barton. Ms. Zanandrea is expecting you. Let me buzz you in."

"Thanks, kid." The heavy door next to the window buzzed, and Clint pulled it open and walked through. Another small buzzer went off, and the kid glanced at a computer screen. "There a problem?"

"No, sir, go ahead. Ms. Z's office is just around the corner."

Clint glanced at the screen and saw a human outline with a blinking dot at the location of each of his weapons. He grinned at the kid, who blushed faintly and went back to his other computer screens.

There was a bull pen area behind reception, desks and tables and a few Demotivational posters on the walls. A couple of security guards were hanging out next to the fancy coffee machine; they looked up, blinked, then nodded at Clint. He nodded back with a smile.

He saw a notice on the wall: How to Deal with Avengers. The first point was "Don't be a dick". The second point was "Most of them are combat trained and experienced: treat them like any other vet you know." Third: "Her name is Ms. Romanoff unless she tells you otherwise. If she says she had a good reason to kill/maim you, we'll believe her." Followed by: "Dr. Banner is far more worried about the Hulk than you are. Standard courtesy reduces his stress levels. Obey his instructions about who or what he wants in his vicinity. That means run if he says 'run', then call it in", then "Thor is addressed as 'sir' or 'Lord Thor', leave Asgardian diplomacy to the professionals" and "Captain America is the description, his name is Captain Rogers", and then, "Mr. Stark is Mr. Stark, see the employee manual." Finally, "They call him *Mr.* Barton."

Clint snickered, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the security guards relax and go back to chatting.

Ms. Zanandrea's office was across the hall from a locked cage holding several kinds of weapons, from non-lethal crowd control through side arms to sets of grenade launchers and fully auto rifles. Considering the kinds of things that had happened in Stark facilities, Clint imagined there were other armories around the building, with exotic weaponry available on demand. He knocked on Ms. Z's door.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Barton," Security Woman said to him after she invited him in. "Welcome to Building Security."

"I'm glad I have a name to call you, Ms. Zanandrea," Clint grinned. "I've just been calling you Security Woman in my head. Like Wonder Woman," he added in response to the quirked eyebrow he got.

"I've been called worse," she said after a moment.

"Haven't we all. I've come to help you with the three idiots that jumped me in the lobby when I got in."

"Oh, good." She waved Clint to a seat on the other side of her desk and pushed a button on her keyboard; the screen on the wall showed a bland conference room of some sort, with the three men, unrestrained, sitting around the table. They glanced around the room sullenly, their hands on the table, not speaking. "They did finally identify themselves as SHIELD, but when I asked what they were doing on private property without notifying us of an operation, they stopped talking. Normally I'd kick them back to SHIELD with a stern memo to the proper authorities, but word from up top said to hold on to them, given the chaos at SHIELD at the moment."

Clint studied the men on the screen. "Who would you normally talk to at SHIELD?"

"Deputy Directory Hill. I pinged her office, but I was told she was out of the office and out of reach."

"Wait, how many times have you had unauthorized SHIELD people on the premises?"

Ms. Z smiled faintly. "A month rarely goes by when someone doesn't think they're smarter than we are and that they can infiltrate the building to scope out our defenses."

"How far have they gotten?"

"The best one so far made it into the elevators unnoticed, but . . . the automated systems spotted him and stranded him between floors with Korean bubble gum pop alternating with the greatest hits of Slim Whitman playing on the Muzak." She lightly tapped the top of what looked like an iPod speaker on her desk. "We were not notified for an hour."

"I've noticed that the automated systems have a unique sense of humor." He frowned. "Stark said Natasha sometimes shows up here for tea with Pepper."

Jarvis' voice came from the speaker. "Ms. Romanoff and I came to an understanding several years ago, Mr. Barton, and Ms. Potts gave her an open invitation to any facility she occupies."

"Of course she did." He frowned as he watched the men. "They haven't said anything?"

"No, they haven't." Ms. Z looked at the screen. "They're talking with their fingers, aren't they."

"Yes, they are."

There were dozens of ways to communicate when under surveillance. SHIELD's finger language was a bit less twitchy than some of the others out in the world. This group had obviously worked together before, they were using shorthand Clint didn't quite recognize. The one who had spoken to him, who Ms. Z had thwacked with her baton, seemed like the leader, he kept glancing at the other two, his fingers doing most of the twitching.

"What are they saying?" Ms. Z asked.

"Be patient, shut up, we'll be out of here soon."

"Great, it's like my kids in the minivan."

"God, I hope not. The lock is junk, we can take them, access to weapons."

"Oh, really," Ms. Z said slowly. "Their weapons are in a property locker, our weapons are behind biolocks."

"I think it's mostly kids in the minivan again, frustrated and spouting off. What were they carrying?"

"A pistol apiece, the guy you took down had a taser."

"What are your options here?"

She sighed. "Strictly speaking, I don't have authority to detain, at least for long. If I've got cause, I should call NYPD, but these guys are agents of a recognized law enforcement organization. I should call their superiors and kick them out." She looked narrowly at Clint. "There aren't any warrants out on you, are there? Were they actually acting under color of law when they tried to grab you?"

"I don't know of any warrants out on me currently." He thought for a few moments. "There is one out on Captain Rogers." Her eyes went real big. "That's not common knowledge, but those three probably know about it. I think they were after me as a known associate."

The obvious dominoes finished falling in her mind. "And you are not the only known associate in this building."

He grinned. "Precisely." He shivered a little inside at the look in her eyes when she looked back at the screen. "Let me talk to them. No, really. One big happy SHIELD family, obvious misunderstanding, but what were they thinking coming in like that on the private property of a major SHIELD ally." He quirked another grin at her. "And I didn't beat them up as badly as you did. Did you break his leg?"

Her smile was tiny and smug. "House nurse says it's just a bone bruise. I didn't put that much English on it. There's a brace on it that'll hold him till he gets home."

"Then we're well into 'no permanent harm, no foul' territory. So can I go in?"

She pondered a few minutes more. "Leave most of your weapons here, just in case." She snickered at his reaction. "No slur on your abilities, Hawkeye. But three to one is still three to one, and that door is just strong, not hardened."

"OK," he said sullenly, "fair enough." He stood and divested himself of the three pistols, two of the knives, and the stinger he'd liberated from Natasha. "I bet you wouldn't ask the Black Widow to leave her weapons."

Ms. Z studied the pile on her desk. "Does she carry as many as you do?"

He grinned. "That's classified."

The lock on the conference room door clicked on its own as Clint approached the room. He moved through quickly for maximum surprise. "Hi, guys!" He closed the door behind him and leaned against it; the lock engaged audibly.

The three men froze partway to their feet, then slowly settled back down.

"Barton," growled the leader.

"Howdy," Clint said cheerfully. "So I don't know your name."

"Crippen."

"Are there medical people in your background?" Crippen just glared. "And your buddies?"

"Smith," the one on the left nodded, "Jones," the one on the right nodded.

"Of course they are. I bet that's even the name on your badges. So, what was that all about, upstairs? There are easier ways to ask someone to come with you than showing up on private property and presenting a threat."

"We were hit first," Crippen said. "And you knew who we were."

"I've never seen you before. You didn't identify yourself." Clint let his pretend affability disappear. You're damned lucky you tried that in a crowded public place, because it was only the civilians that kept me from drawing down on you. I'd have left blood on the floor." He looked pointedly at the brace on Crippen's leg. "She said it wasn't broken."

Crippen's jaw twitched. "She had no right."

"*She* is the head of security, she saw a current resident of the building being hassled. What do you think would have happened if somebody tried something like that at SHIELD? But anyway, whose bright idea was it for you to stake out Stark's lobby and pounce on me when I got back?" They just stared at him. "What, you came in here on your own? Flashed your badges after the fact to cover up the fact that you were working unauthorized? Man, that's never worked when I've tried it. I always got confined to quarters for a few weeks and a black mark when I got caught working on my own." He smiled. "When I got caught."

"Should have been shot, the last time," Smith muttered. The other two didn't react.

"So is that why you decided to set up illegally on the private property of a SHIELD consultant? Of one of the richest men in the world?" Clint asked softly. "Tying up what you see as loose ends?" They didn't answer, not that he was expecting them to.

Fury's death was very much like the unexpected death of a king without an acknowledged heir. Hill was *likely* to be the new director, but until she was confirmed, chaos was the name of the game. The long knives were coming out, and someone with a grudge and the gumption may have organized a hit on Clint as payback for the helicarrier. Once the new leadership was settled, even if it was Hill, who had been known to admit on occasion that Barton was not a waste of space, Clint's death would be ruled a sad side effect of the chaos, let's put his name up on the memorial wall.

He managed a shrug. "Still, at least you're not tied up with that stupidity involving Captain Rogers." He saw all their fingers twitch and then clench as they stopped themselves from silently commenting in front of someone who presumably knew the language they were speaking. "I guess all we can do is wave you on out the door and send you on your way." He pushed himself away from the door.

Crippen got to his feet. "You're supposed to come back with us."

Clint met his eyes. "I haven't been given orders to report in."

"Now you have."

"I don't remember seeing you in my chain of command, and that chain is pretty short." He tilted his head. "Unless you're going to tell me who ordered you here-assuming whoever that is is somebody I'm willing to listen to." Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jones' hand dip below the table briefly then come back up.

Crippen was a bit taller than Clint, and he was trying to loom, but only three people had ever successfully loomed over Clint in the last fifteen years, and two of them were officially dead. And Crippen would never be able to strut in five-inch stiletto heels the way Natasha could.

Crippen blinked very slightly, then fought away the grimace that showed he knew he'd caved. "All our equipment better be returned to us."

Clint rested his hand on the door handle. "Sure. I'll let 'em know." The door unlocked, he turned the handle and swung through the doorway, then pulled the door closed. The lock clicked over, just as the handle rattled from the other side.

"Jarvis," he said to the air, "where are you?"

The phone in his pocket vibrated, and he pulled it out. "Here, sir. The extent of my presence in the Tower is not generally known to the employees."

"Good idea." He knocked and entered Ms. Zanandrea's office. "Did you get a better angle on Jones' hands than I did?" Ms. Z looked up from her computer screen and raised an eyebrow.

"No, sir," Jarvis said from the speaker on her desk. "The camera was on the far side of the room from where Mr. Jones was sitting."

"What did he do?" Ms. Z asked.

"I want to sweep that room once they're out of there. And check the lobby cameras to see what parts of the space they were in when they got here. Jarvis, are you picking up any new gizmos in the lobby?"

"No, sir, but it can be difficult to scan the lobby properly during the day. I can do a full scan after close of business."

"What did they do?" Ms. Z repeated. "Did they plant something?"

Clint shook his head. "I don't know for sure, but this is more than just trying to get me to go back to HQ, even if that was a main objective."

"Speaking of which . . ." She tossed a plastic card on the desk. "Access card for the building."

"What?" He picked it up; the surface blinked, then a beam of light shot up into a hologram of red and gold stars.

"Congratulations!" a salesman's voice declared. "You've won an all access pass to the Tony Stark Extravaganza!"

"The hell?!" Clint managed not to drop the card, but it was close.

"My apologies, Mr. Barton," Jarvis sighed. "Sir insisted on adding what he called a sense of occasion."

"To a key card?"

Ms. Z nodded at the card. "All access pass. Now that you've touched it and it's tied to your biometrics, that grants you access to any Stark facility and most locations that aren't marked private."

Clint stared at the card. "Any."

"Any," Ms. Z repeated.

"Yes, sir," Jarvis added. "Any residence, office, production facility, warehouse, and, in particular, the tower. All external access points, internal security points, and engineering access points."

"I don't want your job," Clint said to Ms. Z.

"You can't have my job."

"Then why!"

"As sir put it," Jarvis said, "because he can. I believe he's considering giving such access to all the Avengers, but he felt that you in particular would most benefit from having a secure, independent network. Yours is not the first, Dr. Banner has one of his own, though he often seems to forget to take it with him on his travels."

Clint stared at the card, now no longer shooting off stars or glowing or looking like anything other than a thick plastic card with his name and an A like the one still hanging on the tower. Discovering he had an apartment of his own in the tower had been boggling enough.

"I can't accept this."

Ms. Z blinked. "Why not?"

"It's too much. It's too big a debt."

She leaned back in her chair. "OK, I obviously thought you knew him better than you do. Mr. Stark literally thinks on a different level than normal people, and it's not just because he's smarter than everybody. Everyone has their own set of resources that they can use to help people they like. You lend someone your car, you let them sleep on your couch, you stand them to lunch if they're low on funds. Mr. Stark is just doing the same thing, but he's got a fleet of cars, the place you can crash for the night is an entire apartment, and the meal is a five-star gourmet dinner. To him they have the same significance." She nodded at the card. "That? Is just like giving your buddy a key to your place. This key just opens more doors."

"Access to all the doors, though . . . Jarvis, isn't that what you're for?"

"I am not infallible, sir," Jarvis said solemnly. "And I have been compromised in the past. If I am not online, that card will control the local door controls."

He turned the card over in his hands. "I've been compromised, too," he said softly. "I can do bad things if there's no way to keep me out."

"If the day arises, sir, when both you and I have been compromised to that extent, then I suspect we will have worse things to worry about."

Ms. Z stood up. "Let's get rid of the Three Stooges, unless you can think of a way we can hold them."

Clint shook his head. "Not that would withstand a call to whoever sent them here. I don't know if Stark wants to get into the game of unlawful restraint. It tends to be called kidnapping when private citizens do it."

"I leave that kind of thing to whatever games he and Ms. Potts get up to."

"And I bet you haven't had breakfast with them."

Clint backed her up as Ms. Z supervised Crippen and his boys having their stuff returned to them.

"You working for Stark security now?" Crippen asked as he pointedly checked the amount of ammunition in his pistol clip.

"Nah, Stark gave me crash space, I'm just returning the favor by reducing the amount of fuss that takes place in his house."

Crippen looked up to meet Clint's eyes. "People keep having to ask what side you're on."

Clint restrained himself from throwing a stapler into his forehead. "No one who knows me."

Crippen shook his head. "Seems like most of those people keep ending up dead."

Ms. Z edged in front of Clint. "You're more than welcome to leave Stark property, Mr. Crippen. Some of my men will escort you out. We'll be asking for a full explanation from SHIELD."

"Good luck with that," Crippen sneered. He smacked Smith and Jones' arms, and they quietly, if sullenly, accompanied the pair of largish security officers out.

"Bouncing their asses off the sidewalk outside the front door?" Clint asked.

Ms. Z shook her head. "Out one of the loading bays, and they'll be under surveillance the whole time. Now, let's look at that room."

"Jarvis," Clint said, "check any footage on them from down here and see if any of them touched anything. And I need a flashlight." Ms. Z silently handed him one.

In the conference room, Clint dove under the table on the side where Jones was sitting. He used the flashlight to shift the shadows on the underside of the table.

"What," Ms. Z said, "did he stick his gum under there?"

"Nope." A clear, paper-thin plastic disc about a quarter-inch across. Faint circuitry glittered under the flashlight's beam. Clint wedged a fingernail under it and popped it free. "Jarvis, at any other point did you lose sight of their hands in here?"

"No, sir, the motion you detected is the only time their hands were out of view."

Clint studied the device. "Natasha could plant a bug with her little toe, with her shoes on."

"Fortunately, we are not in a position of having to counter the Black Widow's activities."

Ms. Z nodded at the thing. "Is that what it is? A bug?"

"Not sure. Can you scan it, Jarvis?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't have sufficient scanning equipment outside of the labs. An analysis of the rest of the footage shows that the three men were not in reach of any other locations where they could hide a device."

"Except up in the lobby."

"Yes, sir." A brief trumpet fanfare played. "Pardon me, sir, Mr. Stark is coming on the line."

"Hey, Katniss," came Tony's voice. "So general assholery on SHIELD's part and the leaving of presents?"

"So far. We're going to need to sweep the lobby to see if they've left anything else. I don't think this is a microphone, because how much that's interesting gets said in there?"

"Right, take it up to my lab, I'm on my way back."

"OK. Did you have fun?"

"Tell you when I get there."

"He should reach the tower in ten minutes, sir," Jarvis said as Tony apparently cut his end. "Don't forget your pass."

Clint blinked. "He's given me access to his lab?"

"General access, yes. He does, on occasion, lock out everyone, but such incidents have become fewer."

Ms. Z led the way out of the conference room. "Let me get you an envelope to put that thing in. And you left your pass card on my desk. Am I going to have to get you a lanyard for that?"

"Yeah, I'm going to wear a card around my neck like an office drone. Remind me to tell you about this guy I know who has an unholy love of lanyards." He carefully placed the disc in the actual paper envelope Ms. Z provided and his pass in his pocket. "Well, this was fun. Natasha's going to love you."

Ms. Z smiled. "Ms. Romanoff was very pleasant the last time we spoke."

"Dammit, Tasha always gets the cool stuff first. See you later, Ms. Z."

"Until later, Mr. Barton."


	14. Chapter 14

Clint stopped by his floor to put way some of his weapons, then went to Tony's lab. Jarvis didn't open the door for him, and he was forced to pull out his new key card to get in. "Troll," he muttered.

"Sir?" Jarvis asked politely.

"Nothing." The door beeped and opened. As Clint stepped in, all the robot arms stopped what they were doing and lifted to stare at him. "Uh, hi, guys. Your boss told me to come in here."

The arms all looked at each other, then the one who had brought him the bean bag, the one Tony had called Dummy, trundled up to him. It stopped and looked him up and down.

"Come on, dude, I was just in here. You brought me the big green bean bag."

The arm beeped.

"Yes, Dummy," Jarvis said sternly, "you certainly did bring Mr. Barton the bean bag. I'm sorry, sir, Dummy is very idiosyncratic."

Clint pulled out his pass card. "Anyway, your boss gave me a key, so you're not allowed to object."

Dummy reached out and clamped down on the card. Clint tried to pull it back, but Dummy held on. He stopped pulling, but Dummy didn't try to yank it away.

"Dummy, you are being silly," Jarvis scolded.

Clint grinned. "I am not throwing this across the room so we can play fetch, dude." Dummy made a sad noise. "Come on, I need that." Dummy slowly let go. Clint patted his head, and Dummy took hold of his fingers with the claws at the end of his arm. "I need those, too. A lot more than I need the card." Dummy slowly raised his head up and down, shaking Clint's hand. "Yes, hi, I'm Clint and you're Dummy, pleased to meet you."

Dummy let go of his fingers and zipped away, going up to one of the other arms and beeping at it.

Clint snickered. "He just said nyah-nyah to that other robot, didn't he."

"Yes," Jarvis sighed, "I'm afraid so. You and Butterfingers are not as forward as Dummy is."

"They're not identical?"

"Hardly. Dummy is the oldest of us. He started small when Sir was quite young, and he has been Sir's test bed for ideas on cybernetics for years. So some . . . peculiarities have crept in."

"I can only imagine." He pulled out the envelope with the disc. "So where should I put this?"

A countertop halfway across the room lit up. "Please place the device on that surface, sir."

He went over and slid the disc onto the countertop. A scanning beam went over it, and schematics began building in midair.

The lab door slid open, and all the robots looked up again. "Hey, kids, Daddy's home!" Tony called as he came in. All the robots beeped greetings. "And hello to you too, Merida. Is that the toy that was left behind?"

"Yep." Clint took in Tony's sharp-edged suit, fine dark wool with the barest pinstripe, not the kind of shiny suit he wore when he was playing the press. He was even wearing dress shoes, not trainers. His tie, shirt, and pocket square were perfectly arranged; even his beard looked razor edged. "Did someone else dress you today?"

Tony shrugged. "I may have popped into Pepper's office for an inspection before I left, but I picked out all my own clothes, mother." He smirked. "I may not follow the rules, but I know very well how to play the game."

"How many people did you leave crying?"

"Only one, but I think it was despair that I didn't have time to do more than smile at him." He dropped the suit jacket off his shoulders and tossed it vaguely towards a lab table. Clint winced when it hit the floor. One of the robots other than Dummy zipped over to pick up the jacket, shake it out, and hang it on a coat rack. Obliviously, Tony took out his cuff links and rolled up the shirt sleeves. The cuff links were tossed onto the counter next to Clint. He picked one up and wondered if the red part of red and gold design actually was ruby.

Tony perched on a stool and studied the schematic. "That's a transceiver, but the range on reception and transmission can't be very long."

"No, sir," Jarvis confirmed. "Given the shielding on the building, any signals would need to be generated just outside the building or inside."

Clint frowned. "So it's supposed to pick up a signal then send another signal on?"

"Yep. But from where and to where? Jarvis said you want to search the lobby."

"Yeah, if they were planting stuff in one place, odds are they're planting things in other places."

"Jarvis, bring up a plot of where our friends went in the lobby."

Another aerial screen came up with a floorplan of the lobby. Three dots entered the front door, not so close together as to be obviously together. They moved slowly through the other people, staying away from the elevator bank and the security desk, as well as from the Starbucks and cafe and the newsstand. One circulated near the door, and the other two wandered over to the window wall that faced the street, with about ten feet between them.

"Keeping watch on the street for you?" Tony commented.

"Maybe," Clint said. "I did foil a couple of observers on the street, so they may not have had warning. I still want to check those spots. When does traffic drop off?"

"Most everybody's out by seven, but the brokerage houses keep a night shift for the foreign markets. Most of the elevators shut down at eight, which is when the front doors lock." Tony checked his watch. "Evening rush hour is starting, you probably don't want to go down now."

"Jarvis, is anything broadcasting out of the lobby?"

"Nothing that has not already been authorized or being monitored."

Tony grinned. "The Stark-Bucks wifi node is very popular."

Clint rolled his eyes. "So what did you find-" The crystal chime of Natasha communications came out of his phone, and he pulled it out. "Damn, just a text."

Tony peered over his shoulder. "How did she figure out how to do an hourglass?"

"Ask her when you see her." He tapped the text, and a snippet of "Star-Spangled Man" played. "Oh, good."

"Does she often send you tidbits of your favorite song?"

"No, idiot, it means Steve's with her, and there's no code to say 'Get here now, I need someone to distract bad guys.'"

"You two have your own language, don't you."

"Yep, and there are ten thousand ways to say 'Stark is an ass.'"

"An ass that gave you the keys to the kingdom."

Clint winced. "Yeah, about that-"

Tony waved a hand and stepped away. "Deal with it. If you need access somewhere, I don't want you to have to fuck around to get approval. Jarvis will know if you use it, and he knows to ask questions if things are weird."

"It's too much."

That got him the patented "I'm Tony Fucking Stark" side eye. "Like I said, deal with it. Drop it in wet concrete if it really upsets you." He headed for the other side of the room.

Clint hadn't heard that brittle "I know I'm a rich asshole, fuck off and die" note in Tony's voice in a long time. "I don't want to be a security risk. Again."

Tony stopped moving, but he didn't look around. "I have security protocols you've never imagined, Legolas. You don't have to be betrayed and blown up too many times before you start making paranoia a virtue."

And maybe having someone out in the world who could get into a possibly endangered Stark facility without needing any help was part of his paranoia. "Fair enough. Though you better not bitch if I start sneaking around the air shafts."

What he could see of the side of Tony's face crinkled with a faint smile. "I'll try to remember to re-program the pest control bots." He clapped his hands. "Jarvis, let's dig into this transceiver. Who made it, what freqs is it working on, the works."

Clint leaned back against a lab table as Tony began speaking geek with Jarvis. The three goons had had plenty of time to plant whatever they wanted in the lobby before they jumped Clint. Why did they need a transceiver, why not just set up something that would receive a signal directly? Another level of complexity, to foil detection?

"So a transceiver would pick up a signal and send one out, right?"

"Right," Tony said, poking at an expanded view of the schematic.

"Why bother? Why not send the signal directly to whatever is going to be signaled?"

"Because this does more than send a signal. There's a timer involved. Ten minutes after a signal is received, a signal is sent out."

"Fucking hell, it's a bomb." Somebody sends a signal and is far away when it goes off . . .

Tony drummed his fingers on his chest. "Of some sort. There are scanners for explosives on the door, no one gets in with any of the standard components of a bomb without attracting a lot of attention."

"You've disabled that thing, right?"

"Oh, yes. Which leaves something in my tower that's waiting to be activated. Get down to the lobby, snoop around where the goons were, see what you can find. Screw the traffic, I'm not letting something like this sit down there with all these people around."

A pissed Stark was not someone you argued with, especially when you agreed with him. "You got an earwig of some sort so I can talk to you and Jarvis?"

"Yeah." He rolled his stool over to another table on the other side of the room and dug around in a box, then pushed back to Clint. "Here you go. There's a camera in it, too, so we can spy on you. Warn us if you go to the bathroom."

"No problem." He checked his pockets for his leatherman and a knife, then headed out.

The private elevator made a swift, non-stop trip to the lobby. Someone he didn't recognize was at the security desk, but the guard recognized him. He got a small nod, then the guard went back to watching the lobby and the monitors.

The lobby was two stories high, with one of those bright, wiggly glass sculptures hanging from the ceiling. Shades of green and blue, surprisingly, not red and gold. Pepper must have made the art decision here. Several dozen people bustled through the space, some heading for the door, some for the Starbucks. Clint maneuvered through the crowd towards the far side of the lobby from the elevators, where Crippen, Smith, and Jones had occupied themselves. He parked himself in the lee of a potted evergreen bush.

"OK, Jarvis, were you able to pinpoint their movements any closer?"

"Please check your phone, sir."

His phone didn't used to have an app that showed scalable floor plans of Manhattan skyscrapers. "Did I get an upgrade?"

"Just a few downloads of useful apps," Tony cut in. "It looks like they focused on two columns." The floorplan zoomed in on the area in question.

The wall that bordered the sidewalk was solid windows-armored glass from the way light played on the surface. A yard in from the windows were columns with light sconces on them that reminded Clint of both Buck Rogers and George Jetson. The lights were above easy reach, and the footage from the lobby didn't show any suspicious crouching or reaching up. The column surfaces had a subtle ripple to them that made spotting stray shadows tricky.

"Can I get a plot of their movements on this diagram?" Clint asked. "I want to see where they lingered." Two dots moved slowly around the columns, pausing slightly on each side. They circled three times before they took off briskly towards the dot that represented Crippen. "Dammit. Did Crippen get close to any walls or columns?"

"No, sir," Jarvis said.

"Oh, well, time to stare at some columns and hope nobody gets curious."

98 percent of the occupants of the lobby were staring at their phones as they traveled through. It was an end-of-the-workday crowd with better things to do than wonder what that one guy was doing over on the far side of the room.

Clint studied the surface of the column, fixing the flow of the structure in his mind, then he put his mind into surveillance mode, studying the terrain and watching for anomalies. Nothing caught him on the sides facing people, but his brain poked him as he looked at the side of the first column facing the window.

"Sir-" Jarvis started.

"I've got it."

On the underside of a ripple just below waist height was a slight, inch-wide bulge the same color at the column surface. Clint crouched down to give himself and Jarvis a better look. A small domed disc was attached to the column.

"Why is this on the window side?" he mused.

"I can think of many bad reasons," Tony said grimly. "It's not emitting any signals. How tricky does it look like it'll be to take it off? It could be booby trapped."

Clint unfolded his knife and gently slid the edge between the disc and the column, leaning a bit around the corner just in case. The disc popped off the column and fell to the floor. He heard Tony's bitten-off gasp and was pleased he'd long ago learned to keep his startles silent.

"OK, it doesn't appear to be booby trapped," Tony said.

Clint flipped it over with the tip of his knife. "It looks like suction attachment with a little bit of sticky. It's not very heavy."

"Doesn't have to be, for a gas attack. Hang on, containment is incoming."

Security Woman herself came striding up. "What are you doing to my building, Mr. Barton?" Ms. Zanandrea said, handing him a small box.

Clint grinned. "Finding presents left behind by a naughty Easter Bunny, Ms. Z." He lifted the disc with his knife and slid it gently into the box. Ms. Z closed the lid smartly. Clint looked the column up and down. "Jarvis, does it look like there's anything else on this column?"

"No, sir. Please proceed to the second column."

There was another disc on the other column, at pretty much the same height. Clint got his hand under it as he slipped the knife edge under it, and it plopped off as easily. He set it in Ms. Z's box.

"Bring that on up to the lab," Tony ordered. "Matilda, set us up with double security shifts for the next few days, start up sniffer and inspection runs in all publicly accessible locations."

She tapped her own headset. "You got it, boss. Mr. Barton," she nodded, then walked away.

Clint strolled around the other columns for completeness sake, then did a quick scan of the doorway. "They could just as easily have attached something to the outside of the building," he said softly.

"There's a sensor grid that covers anything reachable from street level," Tony said. "It means we have to scrape off a lot of gum and concert fliers, but nothing gets put on this tower that we don't know about."

Clint headed for the private elevator, which opened promptly for him and headed up. "Let me guess, anything aerial gets taken out by the defense grid?"

Tony bit off a snicker. "As per Stark Industries protocols, I categorically deny that there are any weapons emplacements on this tower that can be used against aerial targets in the near airspace of this address."

"Ah, long range weaponry only, good to know."

When Clint reached the lab, Banner was there as well. Clint raised an eyebrow at Tony, but Banner saw it.

"Tony knows that I like to know when there is a threat to my residence," Banner said mildly. "It reduces the surprise if something happens."

Clint shrugged. "Fair point. Here you go," he said, handing the box to Tony, who took it and sent his wheely stool to an enclosed box against the wall. He put one of the discs into the containment chamber and closed the door.

"Full containment protocols, Jarvis," he ordered. He wheeled back away from the box, and a light grid popped up around the box.

"That will contain anything biological," Banner said.

"And if it blows up?" Clint asked.

"There's an extensive first aid kit in the cabinet with the red door over there."

The robot arms rolled up to peer over Tony's shoulders. "Standard battle stations, boys."

Dummy lifted a fire extinguisher, the second robot arm took hold of the edge of Tony's stool, and the third one held up a heavy blanket.

"All right, J, passive scans."

A whole Cirque du Soleil performance of lights poured down on the disc. "No emissions or signals detected, sir. The material seems designed to block scanners."

"There has to be something to receive a signal, though, right?"

"That will require active scanning, sir."

"And active scanning could trigger something. Bruce? You sure you want to stay here for this?"

Banner smiled faintly. "Someone will need to clamp off your arteries if something happens."

"You complete me, Brucey. Do it to it, Jarvis."

Clint looked at Banner. "How does he not drive you mad?"

That actually got a chuckle. "I'm not really sure. I think I get distracted from the frustration by wondering what the hell he's going to do next."

A loud beeping came from the containment chamber. "Down!" Tony yelled, diving for the floor. Clint tackled Banner to the floor and shielded him. A giant bang rattled everything, followed by the sound of a fire extinguisher and Tony yelling, "Dammit, Dummy, not me!"

"All clear, gentlemen," Jarvis announced.

Clint held still and considered Banner's condition. "Doc? How you doing?"

"My knees hurt," Banner complained. "Not that the Big Guy cares. Let me up, Clint."

Clint rolled to his feet and gave Banner a hand up. Smoke billowed around the containment chamber, contained by the light grid. A fan inside the area began sucking out the smoke. "So. Bomb after all."

Tony sat on the floor brushing fire retardant powder off of himself. "Yes, a bomb. SHIELD planted fucking bombs in the lobby of my god-damned building, in the middle of the working day, with the population of a large-ish town in the place!"

"Uh oh," Banner said softly.

Clint studied the dispersing smoke cloud. "That actually wasn't that big a blast. I've done worse with legal fireworks."

Tony glared at him, then at the dissipating smoke. "Jarvis, strength of the blast?"

"It was a strong blast, sir, but it was directional. The disc is a shaped charge, designed to go off in a designated conical direction."

Tony frowned. "And they were on the outside of the columns, towards the windows. Someone wants to blow out the lobby windows?"

"Chaos on the street?" Banner said. "Something to look like a terrorist attack going off?"

"Something to justify a SHIELD response, maybe," Clint said.

"They planted them before they ambushed you," Tony said to Clint. "I bet they were going to plant the transceiver on their way out, if everything went to plan. So what, they wander around planting little surprises wherever they go, just in case?"

Clint wagged his head back and forth. "I have, on occasion, set up an op zone with a few extra goodies, in case I need something to . . . mix up the playing field."

"It's not a bad idea, actually," Banner said. "Especially if you're the one expected the distraction and have a response ready."

"A well-timed boom has saved my butt before in tense situations," Clint said.

The lab door swished open. "Hello, boys," Pepper said as she strode in.

"Hello, Pepper!" Tony said, the robots echoing him with whistles that exactly matched the tone and cadence of his greeting.

She stopped and smiled at Banner and Clint, also still sitting on the floor. "Good evening, Bruce, Clint."

"Hello, Pepper," Bruce said. Clint waved.

Pepper looked around the room, focusing on the still-smoke-shrouded containment system. "Does this have anything to do with that security update that showed up in my email half an hour ago?"

Tony put a hand up, and one of the robot arms reached down to give him a lift up. "Yes, Mistress of all She Surveys, it does. Our friends at SHIELD decided to plant some party tricks in the lobby to make life more interesting."

Pepper glared at the smoke. "Tricks that blow up?"

"Set up to blow out the lobby windows for some reason we're not sure of yet. They're set to be activated by a received signal." Tony tapped the small box the other disc was in. "The other toy is safely confined."

"And those are the only ones?"

Tony sighed. "The ones we know that were planted today. They don't trigger our sniffer systems. I told Matilda to start inspections in all public areas."

Pepper stared at the box. Clint told himself it was his imagination that he saw a flicker of flame orange in her eyes. "Is this something Fury would have authorized?"

"I don't put anything past Fury," Clint admitted. "But I don't think he'd have authorized something like this here." He quirked a smile at Tony. "He liked you, he never spent that much time swearing about people he didn't like."

Pepper tapped her fingers on her arm. "Who do we complain to about this?"

Tony grimaced. "We can't prove the SHIELD goons planted the bombs, and we can only insinuate that Jones planted a transceiver under a table. We have nothing to tie the two things together, no proof that the transceiver would trigger the bombs."

"Should we take this to Pierce?"

"Any contact with him will put SI collaboration with his surveillance scheme on the table. He'd ask for a quid pro quo."

Pepper nodded. "You're right, I don't want us getting pulled into government surveillance schemes. I miss Phil," she whispered.

She wasn't the only one. Clint knew that he'd done terrible things in the middle of a civilian population, he really didn't get to criticize agents doing things he had done, but dammit, someone was setting up for a move against a corporation that had provided huge amounts of support to SHIELD. Most of the helicarrier probably had the name Stark inscribed on its components; ninety percent of the body armor agents wore was specially designed by Stark himself. Clint knew Tony was copied on reports of armor failure, and redesigns showed up within days. SHIELD was turning into something Clint didn't like, and it worried him how fast the changes were happening. Someone had to have been waiting for Fury to fall. Maybe had given him a push. Clint didn't think he could work for an organization like that. Maybe it was time to pay more attention to those daydreams about green fields that reminded him of an Iowa he never really knew.

"All right," Pepper said firmly. "Is there anything else to be done in here that will give us information that is useful to us right now?"

Tony looked at various screens, then sighed. "No."

"Do we have anything actionable that needs to be handled tonight? Tony, did you get anything interesting from your visit to SHIELD?"

"The repulsor engines are being used in a next generation of helicarrier, further information is beyond my clearance, I was referred to Pierce. Jimmy Woo said the small devices continue to be appreciated and they'd love to see more. The RFPs for computer control systems are still more vague than I'm comfortable with."

Pepper grimaced. "Business as usual, then." She took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and fixed Tony with a look. "My shoulders hurt."

Tony perked up. "Delighted to leave all this behind and become your grossly overpaid cabana boy, ma'am."

Clint bent over and buried his face in his knees. "Please make them stop."

Banner patted his shoulder. "They're leaving."

Clint listened to the footsteps leaving and the lab door closing behind them. He shouldn't be pissed at them, it wasn't their world falling to pieces around them. They'd done that last year. "I'm tired."

Banner's hand was still on his shoulder. "I'm guessing it's not the kind of tired that would be taken care of by going to bed early."

"No."

"Even for somebody in your line of work, you've had a lot of loss to deal with."

"I avoid the base shrinks for a reason, doc."

Banner chuckled. "As I keep telling people, I'm not that kind of doctor. But I still have eyes. Do you ever get to rest?"

"You mean, like an actual vacation, instead of a trip to a gorgeous location where I get a couple of days leave after I put in arrow in somebody's eye socket? Or where I m cooling my heels in a comfortable resort waiting for someone to whistle me in?"

"Yeah, like that. A trip to a gorgeous or relaxing location without any work-associated excursions."

"I've tried, but I start getting very twitchy waiting for gunshots after about thirty-six hours. Occupational hazard. I'm not really sure what I'd do with real peace and quiet."

"I know the feeling." 


	15. Chapter 15

That night, Clint tried sleeping in the bed in his apartment, instead of on the couch. He'd ordered himself a wonderfully unhealthy pizza covered in pepperoni and buffalo chicken and all the stuff that made Natasha pretend to gag, and he'd sat out on his balcony to eat it and drink beer. He wanted his mind empty, hoping something useful would rise up from the undisturbed depths. But it had been awful lonely out there on his comfortable perch above the city.

He wanted Natasha out there with him, scorning his paltry beer and washing down her pizza with vodka, sneaking pieces without him noticing and putting away enough food to make a strong man blink. He wanted Phil out there, tie loosened, jacket across the back of the chair, nursing one beer, picking off and eating the toppings and cheese bit by bit out of some bizarre belief that such behavior turned pizza into health food.

He wanted his family. When he'd been lost and inches away from deciding that the world had made it obvious that Clinton Francis Barton was extraneous to the universe's needs and he should tidy himself out of the way, SHIELD had swept him up as useful, and Phil had turned him into something wanted. He'd been turned into a person with an identity, with a reputation worth protecting, someone who other people called Sir.

He'd been willing to shoot people when told to for a long time before SHIELD, but Fury and Phil had turned it into something a lot less sordid. If SHIELD left him behind, he didn't know what he would do. Could the Avengers be a full time gig? They hadn't been called up since New York. He'd show up if needed, but who was authorized to pull them together? Stark? Rogers? And what would he do with himself in between? Then again, why else had he been squirreling money away for years?

Maybe try out that peace and quiet, that rest Banner had talked about. Could be interesting.

In the interests of trying new things, he headed into the bedroom, discovered screaming purple pajamas in the dresser, and put them on with half-hearted hopes that he'd have to pop up unannounced around Tony while wearing them.

A well-honed internal clock woke him up at 5 AM. "Dammit," he muttered. Sometimes watching sunrises got old.

No use trying to sleep in, he couldn't do that without someone to watch his back, someone to whisper "Go back to sleep." Natasha might be up reading, or sharpening knives, or practicing that deadly version of tai chi she liked. He could crack an eye open, confirm all was well, then disappear into sleep. On rare but wonderful occasions, Phil would rest a hand on his shoulder and say "It's OK." He liked reading in bed, filling out reports. Clint would close his eyes and let pen scratches and page flips take him under.

"Way to bum yourself out, Barton." He dragged himself out of bed and into the shower, then out to the kitchen. "Mornin', Jarvis."

"Good morning, sir." It hadn't taken long for he and Jarvis to come to an understanding that Jarvis would not speak until spoken to in the morning, and Clint would ignore the fact that Jarvis was effectively spying on him in the bathroom.

"Anything interesting this morning?" he asked as he assembled polenta and fruit.

"No obvious news stories, SHIELD sent out a team last night in response to an explosion at Camp Lehigh, which is an abandoned army camp in New Jersey, and someone attempted to hack your phone at 3 o'clock this morning."

"Someone hacked my phone?!"

"Attempted, sir. They did not succeed."

"Who was it!"

"I regret to say that I was unable to track the attack successfully through the New York Telephone system. I did not want to risk detection or damage to communications systems."

He added more butter to his polenta. "Someone's looking for Tasha, I bet, thinking she'll lead them to Steve. Would my phone have withstood the hack before you and Stark upgraded it?"

"Unlikely, sir."

"Then I guess thanks. Anything on the building security sweeps yet?"

"Nothing dangerous, though the rules on smoking indoors are being reinforced."

"Yeah, you want to find a way to breech security, ask a smoker who can't wait for his coffee break." He finished up his breakfast. "I should go offer my help." He slapped his belly. "Do I remember mention of a gym up on these levels?"

"Yes, sir, on Dr. Banner's floor. He rarely uses it and has said he doesn't mind if others take advantage of the facilities."

"Great. Some treadmill time and a few weights, then I'll go see if Ms. Z needs help spotting bad things."

The gym was not up to SHIELD training standards-he was one or two settings off the highest mark on all the weight machines-but it got his blood moving and his brain awake. He showered again, put on his best skulking clothes, and took the elevator down to the security sublevel, trying not to feel like an office drone headed off to work.

He politely announced himself at the window in the security lobby instead of using his super duper passcard to go through the door. The same kid as before still blinked at sight of him. "Hi, is Ms. Zanandrea in? I'd like to talk to her for a second."

"Uh, yes, Mr. Barton, she just got here, come on back."

He got beeped in. Ms. Z was talking to a large group of security people. She nodded at Clint but didn't stop assigning teams to inspect all the floors that anyone off the street could get to and describing the devices that had been found yesterday. After they were dismissed and off about their work, she came over to him.

"Tell me you didn't find something new," she said without greeting.

"I have not found anything new. But I was wondering if you might like another set of eyes to go look at things."

"Eyes are always good, especially eyes like yours, but if people spot Hawkeye wandering around, talk will start. How are you on enclosed areas?"

He grinned. "I was going to suggest I poke around the maintenance access conduits. I'm not an engineer, but I've got access to the cybernetic brain that rides herd on one of the best ones." He tapped the earpiece that connected him to Jarvis.

Ms. Z nodded. "The loading docks aren't as locked down as we like, and there are access points for the ventilation systems there. The monitoring systems aren't reporting anything, but someone a little more nimble than our engineers should take a glance around."

"I wore my climbing around cramped places clothes for a reason." He graciously ignored the way her eyes flicked over his bare arms. "Show me where you need me."

She sent him off with one of the security guards, who took him through the back ways to the loading dock area and the facilities part of the tower. There were cameras and gates and keypads and guards, but this was still the biggest point of access to Stark Tower. Everything bulk came in here: office supplies, food for the restaurants and the kitchen that supplied the penthouse, whatever weird supplies Tony needed for his labs.

Clint waited till his security guard escort had left. "Jarvis, tell me you have scanners in here that aren't generally known."

Jarvis' voice was amused. "Several, Mr. Barton. Radiation sensors on the outer doors, chemical sniffers at several points, scales in the transport pallets that compare declared weight with actual weight. The freight elevators can be stopped and sealed for quarantine."

The unloaders gave him brief glances, and the guard at the gate sent him a small salute, but otherwise no one paid him much attention. He climbed up to an access door at the back of the loading dock and used his magic pass card to gain access to the maintenance tunnels in the walls.

"All the cards are accounted for, right, Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir."

"How hard are they to copy?"

"The access cards can only be created in the security office in the building, with specific encryptions. Duplicates have been attempted but have not worked."

Which probably made this all useless makework, but he'd gone undercover as a maintenance worker in enemy territory himself. Nearly all of SHIELD's own janitorial staff were cross-trained in anti-terrorist methods and covert operations. So an authorized card might not be in truly authorized hands. So he crept on through the tunnels and catwalks, double-checking devices he didn't recognize with Jarvis, who only identified them generally as parts of his monitoring systems. Clint didn't hold his reticence against him; he'd been given the keys to the kingdom, he hadn't been given the combinations to the safes.

He came to a stop in a wiring closet on the 33rd floor. "OK, Jarvis, this is a waste of time. There are a billion places something could be hidden in this building, and you're already looking in them. Easier to stop them on their way in than to try and figure out where they've been."

"That would be more effici-Your presence is required in the penthouse immediately, sir."

Clint ran out of the wiring closet into the main hallway for that floor, causing an office drone to scream and drop his coffee. "Is it an attack?"

"Not here, sir. Mr. Stark needs you in his lab."

An elevator opened its doors in the lobby. The trio inside peered out. "This isn't our floor," one of them said.

Clint slid inside, and the doors swooshed shut. "Sorry, folks, we're commandeering your elevator, official business, hold on." He grabbed the handrail on the wall as the elevator went into express speed. The trio stumbled and grabbed each other.

"Now see here!" shouted the more executivey looking person.

"Sorry, no time."

The hard deceleration made them stumble again, and Clint braced himself. One of the trio fell against the wall at the sharp stop, but Clint ignored them and slid through the doors as they opened. The doors slapped shut on the protests and threats.

The lab doors were already open. "What is it!"

Tony was standing in front of several screens, looking a mixture of scared and furious. "The Winter Soldier's after Cap and the Widow."

Clint used one of the robots as a pivot to slingshot into view of the screens.

A car rolling down a busy highway, flying to pieces, a huddle of people falling from the car and skidding along the roadway, closely followed by a combat vehicle with a man braced on the hood.

"How do you know it's the Soldier and Tasha?" he asked tightly.

A screen came up with a gallery of traffic camera stills: a sedan with a man leaping onto the roof, a blow-up of the passenger compartment showing Steve looking up at the roof, somebody being yanked out of the inside of the car and being thrown into the other lanes of traffic as Natasha scrambled into Steve's lap from the back. The car braked hard and the man was flung off-and caught himself by digging the fingers of his left hand into the roadway and dragging himself to a stop.

"Police and traffic helicopters are in range for multiple views, sir," Jarvis said.

The huddle of people turned into Steve, Natasha, and a man Clint didn't recognize bouncing off the walls of the roadway and rolling to stops, barely avoiding being run over by cars escaping the mayhem.

"I know him," Tony muttered. "J?"

"Sam Wilson, pilot of the Falcon program, currently an employee of the Veterans Administration."

Clint barely heard. Natasha looked rattled, and who could blame her with the Winter Soldier looking in her direction. "I've got to get there."

"Even at Mach 1 it would take twenty minutes," Tony snapped. His hands kept clenching into fists, then spreading like they were missing the weight of a repulsor in the palm.

The Avengers Plus One got to their feet. The combat vehicle rolled to a stop near them and the Soldier hopped off the hood. A man Clint recognized from the attack on Fury got out and handed the Soldier a grenade launcher, which he leveled and fired at Steve. Steve shoved Natasha out of the way and ducked behind his shield, then was blown off the bridge, losing his shield.

"Oh, god," Tony whispered.

An entire squad opened fire on Natasha and Wilson, who ducked behind stopped cars. The squad and the Soldier advanced, still firing, and the Soldier leveled the grenade launcher at the car Natasha was sheltering behind when she ducked out to return fire. She jumped for the dividing wall just as the grenade landed and exploded. She rolled through the traffic on the other side, ducking under the continuing fire from the squad that was chewing up the cars. The Soldier fired another grenade, blowing up another car and throwing Natasha off the bridge as well.

The views cycled rapidly and found one of Natasha landing on her feet on the road below and taking to her heels under the bridge. Up top, the Soldier swapped the grenade launcher for one of the squad's rifles and took up position at the bridge railing, waiting for her to appear. But Natasha ducked to the side and paused, pulling out a second hand gun. The Soldier shifted, aimed at a tipped-over transit bus, then she jumped out and opened up with both guns up at him.

He fell back, and Natasha dove behind a utility truck.

"My god," Clint said, "did she get him?"

But the Soldier got back up, minus his goggles. He traded shots with Natasha.

Tony pushed a button to zoom in. "So he's got at least some of a normal face under there." He frowned. "I've seen those eyes somewhere."

The rest of the squad came up to open fire, and Natasha slipped back, then sprinted up the street. The Soldier and his men broke off, then he jumped off the bridge, landed on a car, and strode off after her.

"There's Steve's shield," Clint said, "next to the bus. God, do you think he's under it?"

"Maybe in it."

People were crawling out of the bus. Up on the bridge, the squad deployed climbing gear, anchoring themselves to wrecked cars, then went over the side of the bridge. One man landed on a car and leveled a Vulcan machine gun at the bus.

"Christ," Tony said, "they're going to slice that bus in half."

"And Steve with it."

Sparks exploded, then Steve burst out through the back window, next to his shield, which he promptly yanked up as cover.

"The bus, Steve!" Tony yelled at the screen. "Hide behind the bus! Good god, he's walking *towards* the gunfire again!"

With a twist, Steve sent the ricocheting bullets into two of the squad, then started trotting towards the guy with the Vulcan.

"I think he knows what he's doing, Tony."

Steve jumped up on the hood of the car, then grabbed the gunner's head and flipped up and over the man, dropping him on the roof.

Clint beamed. "I want to be Captain America when I grow up."

"We're still waiting for *him* to grow up. Oh, hey, it's Wilson, who didn't run away like a smart person."

Wilson had apparently taken out some bad guys of his own and was shooting towards another squad member, who was ducked down behind a stopped car. Steve looked up at him, then took off running in the direction the Winter Soldier and Natasha had gone.

The Winter Soldier blew a cop car out of his way and racked another round into the grenade launcher on his rifle as he hunted down the street, scanning in all directions.

"Jarvis, where is she?" Clint demanded.

"Unknown, sir, she is not on any cameras."

The Soldier froze, head cocked, and he focused on a car parked at the curb across from him.

Clint peered at the picture. "I can't tell if she's back there."

"I cannot find a better angle, sir," Jarvis said.

The Soldier plucked something from the arsenal on his back, crouched, and gently rolled it towards the car at the curb, then straightened with his rifle ready. Clint held his breath. The grenade blew, but no body flew out of the explosion. The Soldier broke form, then spun as the Black Widow leaped over another car and onto his head. She pulled a garrote on him, but he got an arm up in the way, then he slammed them both back against a car. He reached up and got hold of her, then threw her over his head into another vehicle. She hit hard and fell to the ground. As the Soldier leveled his rifle on her, she pulled out one of her own toys and flung it at him. It hit his metal arm, and her taser disk proceeded to play lightning up and down the arm, freezing it. Natasha sprinted away as the Soldier clawed at his arm and pried the disk loose. He slowly flexed his fingers, rotated the shoulder, then went after her.

Another camera caught her running down the street, gesturing for people to get out of the way.

"Where's your nearest, fastest plane?" Clint asked Tony tensely.

"LaGuardia, I can have-shit!"

Natasha staggered as blood flew from her shoulder and glass exploded from a car window.

Clint clutched the lab bench in front of him as she fell to her knees and stumbled towards the car, clutching her shoulder. "No, Tasha, no . . ." She looked around desperately, trying to spot the shooter. Behind her to her right, the Soldier leaped onto a car and aimed his rifle at her. She turned and stared at him.

"No . . ."

The Soldier jerked his head around, and Steve barreled into him, shield at the ready. The Soldier swung his metal arm into the shield, stopping Steve's charge. They struggled and both hit the ground. The Soldier dumped a load of rifle rounds at Steve, lost the rifle, pulled a handgun, Steve knocked that way, then they went hand to hand. The Soldier grabbed hold of the shield, twisted Steve around by it, then sent him to the ground and took the shield away from Captain America.

Steve crouched and stared for a second, then charged. The Soldier threw the shield dead on towards Steve, who barely dodged, and the shield slammed into the back of a van.

"He knows how to use the shield," Tony breathed.

The Soldier pulled a knife and went after Steve. They grappled and swung at each other, apparently evenly matched. Steve slammed the Soldier into a car, then into the ground, but the Soldier came up and got his metal arm around Steve's throat. Instead of finishing it, the Soldier threw Steve across a car, then followed him to continue the fists and knives and knees. Steve managed to get his shield out of the van's door, but the Soldier kept coming. Steve managed to slam the shield's edge into the metal arm, then threw the Soldier across the street. The rest of the Soldier's mask came off as he tumbled. He staggered to his feet and turned to look at Steve, and Steve froze.

"Oh my god," Tony gasped. "Sweet Mother of God."

"What!" Clint demanded.

"Jarvis, facial capture." Tony started punching things into one of his keyboards.

"Tony!"

Steve and the Soldier spoke to each other, then the Soldier leveled his gun at Steve, who didn't move. And Wilson dropped out of the sky on his own set of wings and kicked the Soldier in the head.

"Wings!" Clint yelled. "That man has wings!"

Tony barely glanced up. "Yeah, the Falcon suit, a jetpack with wings for maneuverability. My attempt at da Vinci's design. But mine works."

Wilson stumbled to a landing, the Soldier rolled to his feet. Steve was still standing in the middle of the street, staring at him. The Soldier stared back for a couple of moments, then raised his handgun again. A round sailed over Steve's shoulder and blew up the car the Soldier was standing beside. Natasha had found the Soldier's grenade launcher.

When the smoke cleared, the Soldier was gone, and as the Avengers Plus One stared at each other, black assault vehicles poured in from all directions. Armed troops jumped out of the vehicles and surrounded Wilson, Steve, and Natasha.

"Who the hell?" Tony said.

Clint studied the uniforms. "Oh my fuck, those are SHIELD! That's fucking Rumlow!"

There was a gunman aiming at Natasha, who painfully put up one hand and lowered the grenade launcher to the ground. Rumlow and his goons circled Steve, who still looked shocked. They shouted at him, and he put the shield on the ground. Rumlow, still shouting like an asshole, went up behind Steve and kicked him in the knee. Steve slowly knelt. One of Rumlow's goons came up and aimed his rifle at the base of Steve's skull.

Tony slowly got to his feet. "Jarvis, prep the drones," he said coldly. "Prep the plane."

"Yes, sir."

Steve bowed his head. The goon leaned in. Another goon yanked Natasha's arms down and into handcuffs. She visibly winced, blood visible on her shoulder. Wilson was locked down, too. Clint couldn't breathe.

Rumlow glanced up into the sky, into the camera of a helicopter. He spoke to the goon, who lowered his rifle and stepped back.

Tony stared at the screen. "Jarvis, could you tell what he said?"

"Analysis gives an 82% likelihood that he said 'Not here.'"

Tony's fists clenched.

Steve's wrists were locked into heavy metal manacles, then he, Natasha, and Wilson were loaded into one of the vans and driven away.

"Find them, Jarvis."

"Searching, sir."

"If he's dead, they burn."

"Yes, sir."

Clint wanted to argue, but he was still staring at the screen, where his own people were ordering civilians away, where the various camera feeds were slowly going dark and the chopper cameras were ordered away. Had SHIELD, which had celebrated the return of Captain America, just dragged Steve Rogers off to put a bullet in his brain? Was Natasha . . .

The lab door slid open. "Tony!" Pepper yelled as she ran in.

Tony turned. "God, Pepper." He caught her and hugged her. "How did you find out?"

"My secretary caught the news feed, sent it to my desk. Is Steve-"

"I don't know."

Pepper hugged him tight, took a deep breath, then leaned back to look him in the face. "Tell me you have a suit, tell me you can get down there."

Clint turned and stared.

Tony took a step back from her. "Pepper-no. I don't. I promised. You asked me not to, and I promised." He blinked at her. "Are you crying?"

She framed his face in her hands. "I love you so much."

"And this makes you cry?!"

She leaned up to kiss him. "Tony. If you had a suit, you'd have been in the air already, off to kick the asses of the people from our own government who pointed guns at Captain America. But I grounded you."

He took her hand. "You are more important to me than Captain America. And I made you a promise."

Clint studied Pepper. CEO of a thriving Fortune 100 company, holder of the devotion of one of the richest men in the world, who wore a flying weapon of mass destruction and who had proven he would unhesitatingly kill for her. Some women would have broken and run from that kind of attention. Other women would have smiled and asked for increasingly extravagant demonstrations of that devotion.

Other women were not Pepper Potts, who had stood on her own glowing, deadly feet and rescued herself from peril, as much as she could. That woman straightened her spine and looked Iron Man in the eye.

"I was wrong to ask you to do that," she told him.

He shook his head. "Pep, my head was a mess-I built an army, and it wasn't enough-I'm still-"

She kissed him quiet. "You're right, that was a mess. But you're better. You really are. And the suits weren't the problem, they were just a symptom, but you're dealing with that. And yes, I've been talking to therapists, too. In any case, how fast could you have a suit?"

Jarvis made a polite noise. "The components exist in the Tower to create a workable suit in two hours."

Tony glared at the air. "Jarvis, when I told you to destroy the suits, I meant the components, too!"

"Did you, sir? You didn't say."

"And you told me you destroyed everything!"

"All viable suits were destroyed."

Tony closed his eyes. He looked like he was in pain. "Dammit, I promised!"

Pepper put her hand on his cheek. "Yes, you promised, and you kept that promise, because you always keeps the ones that are important to you, and the fact that you kept this promise is why I love you."

He studied her for a couple of seconds. "Why won't you marry me?"

She smiled. "I'm not Beyonce. You don't have to put a ring on it."

"God, if there weren't Avengers in imminent threat to their lives, I'd take you upstairs and-"

Clint slapped his hands over his ears. "La la la la la!"

"Oh, sorry, Barton."

She kissed his cheek. "There's a world to save again, Tony."

"Dammit." He got serious. "Are you sure? You were never happy with the suits, even before I went off the deep end."

"Yes, they scare me," she admitted. "You're in so much danger when you wear them. But not wearing them doesn't seem to make much difference to the possibility of you getting hurt. I believe in Iron Man, in everything he is and everything he can do. The world needs him in the sky. And I can just put on my big girl panties and deal with it like the CEO of a Fortune 100 company should."

There was still dread in his face, but the old daredevil spirit was rising in his eyes. "Are you sure we can't go upstairs? Jarvis said it would take two hours."

She smiled and tapped his lips. "You have a lot of work to do. And I don't want to make Clint die of embarrassment."

But Clint wasn't paying attention to them, anymore. His phone was buzzing with calls and texts from SHIELD, numbers he didn't recognize, and he couldn't clear his mind of his last view of Natasha's shellshocked face as she was led away at gunpoint by the people she'd served with. Two hours before Tony had a suit, then twenty minutes at Mach One. There was a plane being prepped, but it would be an hour flight time to get to Washington, and he wouldn't be able to trust anyone at SHIELD as he tried to find Natasha.

He didn't like his world any more. 


	16. Chapter 16

Pepper went back down to her office. The press was starting to holler, wanting to know what the official Stark Industries line was on Captain Steve Rogers being taken down by shock troops in SHIELD uniform. And wasn't that the Black Widow? Were action figure futures in danger? Did Iron Man have a statement?

Iron Man did not have a statement, other than "Jarvis, which gauntlet armatures do we have in stock?" and "Butterfingers, stay out of the fabrication section!" The armor bots were hanging out of the ceiling, suit bits in "hand", and Tony Stark was in his glory, creating his little heart out.

Clint wanted to hate him. His soul sister, the warm part of his heart, had been shot and carelessly bundled off to who knew what. It had been forty-five minutes. She could already be cooling in a shallow grave.

Banner had been and gone. Jarvis had given him the abridged version, without visuals, and once Banner had had his heart rate under control, he'd come down to the lab to watch some of the footage. He'd stopped in the lab doorway, watched Tony fling holographic schematics around and order up renderings of helmet designs, and he'd slowly smiled. "What happened?" he'd asked Clint, who was sitting on a couch in a corner.

"Pepper told him she was wrong, that Iron Man needed to be in the sky, kicking ass."

"He does. Thank God she finally saw that. So where are the upsetting pictures?"

Tony had barely noticed he was there. He currently had his face buried in a split open armor leg, soldering together circuits, one of the bots holding a light for him. Dummy came over from the giant milling machine at the far end of the room, carrying what looked like a thigh plate. Tony pointed the soldering iron over his shoulder at a lab bench with other armor bits on it. "Position four, Dummy."

Dummy whistled and rolled over to the table, placing the thigh plate carefully among the others. He looked back at Tony and whistled a rising phrase.

"Get me the coil of fiber optic cable from the second wire cupboard, the fine gauge."

Dummy rolled away.

Clint smiled slightly. So when it hit the fan and the boss was no longer kidding around, the cyber clowns did know their jobs.

"It's probably already too late," he said, surprising himself.

Tony didn't look up. "I know."

"We might not be able to save them."

"There's a reason for the big red A on this building. We go avenge the hell out of somebody's ass." He wiped the soldering tip off on his pant leg, adding another scorch mark, and glanced over his shoulder. "I notice you didn't go grab that plane that's waiting out at LaGuardia."

"An hour flight time, and they'd probably lock me up if I showed my face in a SHIELD facility. You can at least sneak up on them."

Tony shifted the leg in its cradle to work from another angle. "I don't intend to sneak. Jarvis, how long would a paint job take? I'll go in plain metal if I have to, but I'd really like to wear my colors when I kick in the Triskellion."

"Three hours, for proper curing of the coatings."

"Bah." He glanced at Clint again. "You're going to need transportation."

"I'll take the plane when you're nearly done. Unless you've got one of those wing suits."

Dummy returned with the spool of cable; Tony began feeding it into the leg. "There was only one left, and it looks like Wilson grabbed it. Jarvis, bring up the Falcon file for Barton."

A floating screen popped up next to Clint. He was used to gathering intel in combat situations, using the lulls to pull in information. And the file was interesting enough to distract some of the terrified screaming in his brain. "If I ask you to make me one of these, you're going to insist on calling it a Cupid suit, aren't you."

"And make it so you can only wear a big white diaper when you fly it." He clipped wires and tested connections, finally nodding and handing the leg off to one of the bot appendages hanging from the ceiling. "Give me the left gauntlet." A framework of fingers with a completed wrist section swung around in front of him. "You, get me a set of repulsor cores. Butterfingers, get me the arcs. Dummy, light."

The robots all moved like an orchestra around him, moving at his gestures, obeying his words. It was a wonder Tony Stark managed to function as one part of a team at all.

Clint's phone buzzed again; Caller ID said Jimmy Woo. Clint hesitated, but let it go to voice mail. He waited for the beep that said a message had been received, then sorted through all the messages from people he didn't recognize to Jimmy's. "Clint, orders are for you to get in here. I've got no word on what's going on with Rogers and Romanoff, sorry. You must be busy, because all calls are going to voice mail and you haven't acknowledged any texts. So, when you get around to reading your messages, which may be a while, you should probably report in."

Clint smiled faintly. Good old Jimmy, plausible deniability forever.

"What's the word?" Tony asked, looking over a small rack of glowing arc reactors one of the robot arms held for him.

"I've got orders to report in."

"That's not happening."

Perversely, Clint bristled. "You don't get to decide for me."

Tony glanced up, an arc reactor in hand. "Do you want to go in?"

He sighed bitterly. "No, of course not, I know the odds on what'll happen. I get arrested or used as leverage against Steve and Tasha. But there is a tiny chance that going in is the right thing to do."

Tony smiled cruelly. "Pity about that tumble you took down the stairs and what it did to your ankle. You probably won't be able to leave the building for a few days."

Clint stared at him. "If you try to get one of your robots to throw me down the stairs, hydraulic fluid will spill."

Tony blinked innocently and turned back to work, summoning the torso framework that held the external reactor.

"How much longer?"

"That two-hour estimate was pretty accurate. I had no idea all these sub-assemblies were in storage," he added with a glare at the ceiling.

"The self-destruct components had not been installed in the sub-assemblies, sir," Jarvis said smoothly. "And between your and Ms. Potts' surgeries, I felt you had other things to worry about."

"Sure you did." But there was a smile lurking at the corners of Tony's mouth. "Another hour for assembly, half an hour for testing, we should be ready to try the air."

Clint sighed and got to his feet. "Then I should get to that plane of yours. Is there a pilot, or can I fly myself?"

"You rated for the Gulfstream G550? It's happier with two flying her."

"I'm rated for everything Gulfstream puts out, including the stuff nobody knows about. If your pilot will ride shotgun, he can stay."

"Jarvis, let Pilot Suzie know."

"Yes, sir."

"Pilot Suzie? Geez, Stark . . ."

"13-year veteran with United, she got sick of the schedules. I trust her with Pepper."

"Fair enough. I'll get suited up and head-"

A crystal chime came from his phone.

"Oh, god." Clint pulled out his phone and dropped back onto the couch.

Tony stopped what he was doing. "That's Natasha, isn't it? Answer it!"

"They may have taken her phone, it's what I'd do."

The phone binged with a text message. His hands were shaking as he pulled it up.

*You still owe me cotton candy.*

He buried his face in his knees. "Thank god," he whispered, "thank god."

"Clint!"

"It's her."

"Well, call her the fuck back!"

"She'll call in another 35 seconds."

"35 seconds is a long time."

Clint knew the kinds of things that made seconds last eternities. "I'll call if she misses."

"Jarvis, track the call."

"Stay out of my phone, Stark!" A chime. "Tasha! Are you-"

Her voice was thin and in pain. "We're alive and free. Unclench yourself."

"You were hurt."

"You did see it, then."

"Stark's systems were tracking it through all the cameras. How bad is it?"

"It went through, the problem was blood loss, I've got use of the arm. I've got a doctor."

"Where are you?" He saw Tony grab a wrench and swing his arm back in preparation to throw it at him. "Can I put you on speaker?" Tony paused.

"Stark's there?"

"Yeah."

She covered the pickup, but Clint heard her talking to someone. After a moment she came back. "Yeah, put me on speaker."

Jarvis had obviously been monitoring, because her breathing suddenly came over the room speakers. Clint glared at Tony, who shrugged.

"Stark, don't talk yet," Natasha said as he took a breath. "Please." He gaped in surprise but leaned back. "Clint, I can't tell you where we are, not yet. This-this is everything. SHIELD is rotten."

Clint swallowed. "How rotten."

"SHIELD is just a cover for Hydra."

"What the-what? Hydra? Hydra's dead! Steve killed them!"

"Steve drove them underground. They used SHIELD as a cover, climbed up the structure we built. Used us to do their work."

"No. No, we did good work. We stopped bad things."

"I know, Clint, I know. But not all of it, and I don't know which parts. Who did we kill for Hydra's gain, what did we do that made Hydra happy?"

Tony lost control of his patience. "How do you know this, Natasha! How the hell do you know this! My father built SHIELD, and he was not Hydra!"

"Tony, I know!" And that was Steve, sounding nearly as wrecked as Tasha. "Peggy built SHIELD right beside him!"

"Then how?" Tony asked in a small, very-unStarkish voice. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I think I'm sure. I saw all kinds of documents, those could be faked, but the things that are happening-they all make sense if this is Hydra's work."

"What documents? Where?"

"We followed a lead out to Camp Lehigh. We found an early SHIELD installation from the SSR days, and underneath it was a hidden room filled with computer equipment, dusty, old, but it turned on when we poked at it."

"70s, 80s era," Natasha added. "Hundreds of tape reels, but some parts were up to date. It was being maintained."

"Wait," Clint said, "Jarvis said SHIELD responded to an explosion at Camp Lehigh last night."

Steve gave a surprisingly bitter laugh. "Yeah, that was SHIELD firing a missile at us, then sending a strike team in to try and finish us off."

"Did the system alert them?" Tony asked.

"As soon as it turned on. Zola said he was delaying us until the missile was too close to dodge."

"Zola?" Tony repeated.

Steve took a breath, but Tasha cut in. "Let me, Steve. Short form: Did you know Arnim Zola came over as part of Operation Paperclip?"

"Yeah, Dad sponsor-oh, fuck."

"Zola took the opportunity to pull together all the true believers that had escaped and hid them within SHIELD to start their work again. And when Zola got sick and was told he'd die, he figured out a way to save himself in a giant computer bank, along with thousands of documents showing what they'd done."

"What, he put himself in a computer? And he was sane?"

"He was never sane," Steve snapped.

"He was coherent," Natasha countered. "And proud to talk about what Hydra had accomplished since the War. They've been destabilizing the world so that people would be grateful for the jackboots to come in and impose peace."

Clint shuddered. "And we helped."

Tony shook his head hard. "There's been a massive computer bank in New Jersey for decades with Arnim Zola's brain in it? As a Hydra mastermind?"

"His memories and personality," Natasha corrected. "It's not like 'They Saved Hitler's Brain.'"

"They did *what*?" Steve yelped.

"No, they didn't, it's an awful movie, never mind."

"How could nobody notice?" Clint asked.

"Because nobody was looking," Tony sighed. "After the war Dad hit every party and club he could find, designing weirder and weirder things while hooking up with any woman who would stand still long enough. I think a lot of people went nuts after the war. And anytime Peggy tried to do anything productive, they told her to make more coffee."

Steve made an uncomfortable noise. "The files I've seen show Howard and Peggy were more involved with SHIELD than with the SSR, they made changes from what was going on. But Peggy and Howard would never-not the people I knew."

Tony smiled. "At no time in her life did Peggy Carter ever take shit from anybody. And Dad despised Hydra all his days. Free people spend more money, he said." He grimaced. "He also said peace was bad for business, but, well."

"And you don't believe Howard could be hiding something like this?"

Tony took a deep breath and let it out. "All I ever knew of my father is what he wanted me to know. And some of it I learned too late. Dad-twisted. And dodged. He held things back. But I can't think of a time he actually stated a falsehood. There was a lot of con man in him, but he was a scientist. Science doesn't forgive lies."

Steve sighed. "So they were honest-but blind."

"They all thought it was dead," Clint said quietly. "You died to put the final stake in its heart. Play the triumphant music, roll credits, no extra scene at the end to show the snake crawling away for a sequel."

"They didn't want to know my death was a waste."

"The millions of people living on the eastern seaboard didn't think it was a waste," Tony said. "So there's that. By the way, Steve, we saw the footage of the fight. Saw the Winter Soldier."

"Not now, Stark!" Natasha snapped.

"Did you see his face?" Steve asked eagerly. "Do you have it in your computers?"

"Steve, don't-"

"Yeah, Steve, I do."

"I think it's Bucky. Bucky Barnes."

Clint straightened up. "What, your buddy Bucky, the Howling Commando?"

Tony pushed a button on a keyboard. The full-face shot of the Winter Soldier came up next to a still of Bucky Barnes from World War II. "I already ran the facial recognition. It's him."

It sounded like someone punched Steve. "Oh, Bucky. Oh, Mother Mary."

"Damn you, Stark," Natasha hissed. "He does not need this now."

Tony shrugged. "OK, well, it's Barnes or he's got a grandson who's a fiendishly identical twin."

"You recognized him," Clint said. "During the fight, you already knew it was him."

"When you've sat through as many nostalgic newsreel viewings as I have, some things stick. A lot of what's in the Smithsonian exhibit came from Dad's collection."

"Steve," Natasha said, "we don't have time for this."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Tasha," Clint said, "where are you?"

"I can't tell you, Clint."

"Stark's getting a suit ready, he's going back in the air. We can't help you if you don't tell us where you are."

"You can't come," Steve said firmly. "If what we're going to do doesn't work, there need to be people out there who can deal with what comes next."

"Which is?"

"You'll know. Tasha?"

She paused. "Clint, take me off speaker."

Clint looked at Tony, who nodded. "Speaker off, J."

Clint picked up his phone. "You're currently safe? You're currently warm and fed?"

"Yes, solnyshko. And you're in the lap of luxury with Stark."

"I'd rather be with you. Who turned on you that's upset you?"

"Jasper."

"Jas-Sitwell? Sitwell is Hydra?"

"Was. The Winter Soldier yanked him out of the car-"

"Shit, I saw that. That was-? Shit."

"Yeah."

"Are you sure? He was pretty much Phil's best friend! They plotted together and got drunk together and-" He finally interpreted her silence and went cold. "Natalia Alianovna Romanov, do not insinuate that Phil Coulson is Hydra."

She came as close to choking off a sob as he'd ever heard. "I don't know who to believe anymore, Clint."

"That's what they want. Do you believe in me?" he asked carefully.

"Yes," she said unhesitatingly, and he blinked back the tears in his eyes.

"I believe in Phil."

She took an unsteady breath. "All right. If you betray me, I'll cut your throat slowly," the Black Widow added coldly.

"You have always been my perfect woman," he said sincerely.

She gave a faint snort and hung up.

Clint put away his phone and looked at Tony cautiously.

Tony held up the nearly complete gauntlet in his hand. "Like I have room to talk." He cleared his throat. "So, Jarvis, looks like we have time for that paint job after all." 


	17. Chapter 17

As Tony went back to his armor, Clint slipped out of the lab. He did a quick turn through some maintenance crawlways, then made his way to the helipad. He went out to the edge and perched, staring out over the city in the late afternoon.

What he knew about Hydra came from half-ignored history lessons from SHIELD (and how true were those?), old Captain America comic books he'd scrounged as a kid, and lectures from Phil in strange places where Phil had become chatty and random under the influence of drugs or exhaustion or god knew what. Stories of the Red Skull and weird science, the teenaged sidekick Bucky from the comics, the tragically lost childhood friend fallen from the train. All safely in the past, a defeated foe from a vanished age.

But instead of being a persistent but conquerable foe like in an Indiana Jones movie, Hydra had turned into a modern monstrosity, lurking in the background, sending its trademark tentacles into every corner of the world, using people who didn't even know it was there to do its dirty work.

As Steve had said, so many things made sense if you plugged Hydra into the equation. Missions he'd hesitated about, not sure about the validity of a target. Strange meetings where inappropriate information had been traded for questionable returns. The strategists always said these jobs played into a bigger picture, eating away the ground under a bigger target. Clint had imagined the ally of a major drug lord being lured into a vulnerable position or a future political move being shortcircuited. Now he pictured the removal of reformers from newborn democracies and the activists for oppressed people being silenced. Anything that brought peace where Hydra wanted violent chaos.

He thought he was finally doing some good in his life. And Natasha had thought she was balancing her ledger. They and everyone else in SHIELD had just been pouring more red around. And some of them had being doing it willingly.

Who had he trusted when he shouldn't have? Fury himself? No, if Fury had been Hydra, that flag would have already been flying from the first helicarrier. The people on the World Security Council who went behind his back to launch missiles at Manhattan? There was a pot of people aching to bring the world to heel by a choke chain.

Hill? Fury's soldier, heart and soul. He'd been in too many hellholes with her to think she had a secret agenda. Facades tended to drop when you were leaning all your weight on somebody else's femoral artery while that somebody else shot over your shoulder to hold off the attackers till rescue came.

But Sitwell. Clint had poured both Phil and Jasper into taxis after bad-day's-nights on the town. In the early days, he'd run a few missions with Sitwell in charge, and those missions didn't ping suspicions. He wasn't one of the higher level agents who wandered around like Jason Bourne Mk.2, making sure everyone knew they were privy to secrets you weren't cool enough to know.

Maybe Phil knew. Or suspected. Maybe it was part of why he was off in the mists, still officially dead. Maybe Clint needed to make a bigger effort to find him so Clint could dump this load as well on his shoulders. Clint was a tool, a smart, capable tool who could overcome the weirdest obstacles to his objective. But he didn't set objectives.

Where had Natasha and Steve gone? Someplace safe enough they could risk calling out, someplace with a doctor. Someplace where they could take stock and plan a counter-offensive. Now he regretted telling Tony not to trace the call. Maybe Jarvis had cheated on that as well.

When he got back to the lab, Tony was still surrounded by mostly built armor pieces hanging from the ceiling, but he leaned against a lab bench, most of the upper armor on him, staring off into space.

"Should I leave him be, Jarvis?" he asked quietly.

"Come on in, Barton," Tony said, not looking around.

Clint went to the couch, watching carefully. A Stark brain could be careening on any of a dozen paths, maybe he was puzzling out how to wire in a circuit, or maybe he was worrying about going back into the sky. "What's up?" he finally asked.

"A full sixth of Stark Industries' production goes toward SHIELD projects in some fashion. Armor, aircraft, ground vehicles, computer systems, building modifications. I've even done some limited run specialized small arms for them. And all this time I've been supplying Hydra. Doing work that would have disgusted even my father. God, I've actually *reduced* the amount of work we've been doing for SHIELD, Dad supplied most of the high-tech weaponry, and they're still one of our major clients."

"You're going to shut that down, right?"

"I've already had that talk with Pepper. It's not that easy. It took months to switch SI over from weapons to electronics, and we're still feeling it in the balance sheets."

"Your stockholders-"

"Can suck it in this case, I agree. But there are tens of thousands of people around the world working in facilities with my name on them. It's not their fault they're earning excellent wages making equipment for genocidal maniacs. There are small towns where my plant is the only thing keeping them going. I can't keep supplying an organization best described as filthy, but I also can't rip the guts out of innocent communities just like that." He rubbed his forehead. "And god knows how many Hydra operatives are in those facilities, masquerading as SHIELD or Stark representatives. How many people in this building right now whisper 'Hail Hydra' to each other in the hallways below us? How many come within arms' reach of Pepper every day?"

Clint swallowed hard. Ms. Z, the kid at the security room window, Ahmed the Night Security Guard. Any, none, or all of them. Hydra would have had a presence in the Stark organization from day one. Down in the mail room was some schlub who barely knew Tony as more than the guy in the fancy suits, cloth and metal. He probably only worried about the chairman of the board in passing. Up here, Tony was fretting over the thousands of people in his company, worrying about what SI's ties to SHIELD had exposed them all to. The Ten Rings, in a video Clint wasn't supposed to have watched over Phil's shoulder, had called Tony a prince. He didn't think they were far wrong.

Clint's phone rang yet again, the generic tone for an unfamiliar number. "God damn it, shut up!" he snapped at the device. "Nobody I know is calling. At least nobody I'm sure of. I don't know if they're Hydra goons or loyalists trying to figure out where I stand."

"Which begs the question of, where *do* you stand?"

Clint's head snapped up. "What? How dare-"

There was a robot less than ten feet away from him holding a welder. The lab door was closed, lockable at a finger-flick. All the armor assembly bots were hanging from the ceiling, their manipulator claws ready. Iron Man stood in his mostly-assembled armor, the on-board arc reactor glowing, gauntlets with repulsors on his hands, watching Clint with veiled suspicion based on the experience of betrayal in his eyes.

Clint straightened and stared back at him. "I am not HYDRA. I may or may not still be SHIELD." He raised his chin. "I am an Avenger."

Tony shivered and took a deep breath. "Yeah. When we doubt everything else, we still have that." He frowned. "For what it's worth. Even Hydra would want to thwart Loki."

"I bet Hydra would think they could manipulate Loki. And for what it's worth, if I was Hydra, I think Loki would have been delighted to drop that little tidbit somewhere." Tony nodded. "I've been wondering about the Council. They were willing to nuke New York. But would Hydra?"

"They thought we were losing. I can see them deciding to kick over the table and rebuild on the ashes."

Clint grabbed his hair. "Dammit, this is why I have Phil and Tasha. I don't do politics! And, for what it's worth," he added snidely, "Phil is not Hydra."

"Are you sure?" Tony asked carefully.

Clint started to snap, but he grinned instead. "The ultimate Captain America fanboy? Who wore nothing else for Halloween seven years running? Working for Hydra?"

Tony snickered. "Point, set, and match, Legolas." He stretched his arms out towards the back wall and cycled up the repulsors. Clint covered his head. The repulsors fired but barely knicked the wall. "Relax, that was quarter-power. Jarvis, numbers?"

"Repulsors and reactor all within norms, sir. Power channels performing to specifications. The final leg and lower torso pieces will be ready within twenty minutes. The HUD program will finish compiling in fifteen."

"In other words, sit my ass down and take a break."

"I would never use that phrasing, sir."

"I heard you thinking it. OK, bots, undress me." He put his arms up and the various arms whirred and spun and unfastened and took away.

Clint leaned his head back against the couch. "You sound like a tire change shop."

"For that you get the cheap beer, Katniss. Dummy, You, bartender duty." When he was free, Tony came over and plopped down on the other end of the couch. The two arms rolled up a couple of minutes later, one with a cold bottle of Belgian beer and one with a large glass of something beige. "Oh, yummy. And what is in today's concoction, Jarvis?"

"Wheatgrass, bananas, protein powder, pomegranate juice, and a touch of gold-titanium shavings for body."

Clint blinked, but Tony just accepted the glass. "I don't even care anymore." He clinked the glass against Clint's beer bottle. "Cheers." He drank.

"They're feeding you metal shavings, and you're drinking it anyway?"

"Gold's good for you, and there's only a 30 percent chance that the metal is really in there. Dummy has gotten much better about recipes." He tapped the glass gently on one of the arms, which whistled and bobbed.

Clint looked at the other arm. "Which makes you You?" The arm beeped then ducked and scooted away. "You made him shy?" he asked Tony, who shrugged.

"You has never been the extrovert Dummy is." Dummy beeped and spun around, whistling something that sounded like "It's A Small World." "At least I'm sure they're not Hydra. And that I'm not Hydra."

Clint snorted. "I've only got your word for that, you know." He ignored the look he got. "No one ever tried to recruit me. Makes me feel a little unwanted."

Tony hmphed. "Yeah, like you'd do well in an authoritarian, top-down fascist organization designed to make everyone fall in line. I don't see you standing in massed ranks and raising your arm to salute the leader, unless it was with a single finger."

"Two fingers, the archer's salute. And they'd never recruit you, you'd just laugh at them and pee on their flag, then make a You Tube video of yourself and a dozen show girls in fake Hydra uniforms."

Tony nodded, then frowned and drank half his smoothie. "They'd have recruited Obadiah. Maybe they did."

There was silence for a couple of moments, then Clint snickered. "So are we saying that we can trust each other not to be Hydra because we're arrogant, authority-flouting, uncivilized assholes?"

"Fist bump, bro."

Clint obliged.

Pepper summoned them for a late dinner, but Clint begged off. He didn't think he needed to be a witness to the master and mistress of the Stark empire fretting over their subjects. He took beer and leftover pizza out to his balcony.

"Jarvis, have you found any of the documents that Steve mentioned."

"There is nothing that explicitly refers to Hydra, sir, and I have not had the opportunity to do a text analysis for specific names."

"No, this isn't Scooby Doo, where a quick search of the newspaper archives shows Old Man Johnson's been behind it all along. Anything on Camp Lehigh last night?"

"Apparently incorrectly stored ammunition corroded to the point of instability."

"Of course it did." Camp Lehigh was abandoned after the war, no longer needed to help process the waves of new soldiers. Except for the parts that newborn SHIELD used, and, apparently, Hydra. The construction records from that time would be interesting reading. The power consumption records were probably buried along with those of all the other SHIELD hideyholes around the world.

"Is the Winter Soldier really Bucky Barnes?" he asked, his thoughts shifting. "Was the facial recognition match that reliable?"

"90th percentile likelihood." A screen appeared above his stone table, with the pictures of Barnes and the Winter Soldier. As Tony had said, they were either the same man or Barnes' looks had remarkable genetic durability through a couple of generations. "Sergeant Barnes does not appear to have aged more than a year or two past his last known picture."

"He really has been on ice, then, just like Steve. He looks like hell."

"Cryogenic suspension is even now considered theoretical. I don't imagine Sergeant Barnes has fared well as a test subject."

"Poor bastard." Clint hadn't needed Phil's stories to know about Bucky Barnes. Every kid who read comic books had pictured themselves in Kid Bucky's boots at Captain America's side. Finding a history book as a teenager and reading about the real Howling Commandos had solidified Clint's admiration, as well as the secret speculation that maybe Kid Hawkeye might just be a better shot. And now the Winter Soldier, who he'd sworn about and reluctantly admired, was the captive Bucky Barnes himself.

Barnes hadn't seemed to recognize Steve, though there had been some puzzlement-when he wasn't beating the crap out of Steve. He had to be enhanced himself-Steve hadn't been going full out offensively, but he'd had to put some back into it to keep himself alive. The man looked exhausted, like any soldier with an endless job to do who had put his soul away somewhere else and was just trudging on until he could find a place to rest. Except his soul had been taken away. One of these days, Clint supposed he'd be part of an operation to find and eliminate the Winter Soldier. If there was any chance Barnes remembered, if Steve Rogers' best friend knew what he'd been doing for three-quarters of a century, the kindest shot might be to his brain.

For a fleeting second, Clint almost believed that a few days as Loki's thrall was not that big a deal. Almost.

Did Hydra know who the Soldier was? They almost had to, they were running Hitler's weird science division, and weird science made the Winter Soldier tick. He's always been a terror weapon, a whisper, a rumor. But now they were deploying him in broad daylight in a population center. Psychological warfare against Steve personally? Or someone was so anxious about what was going on that all subtlety had been lost. "Jarvis, what's the chatter talking about in the SHIELD systems?"

"There is much speculation about Captain Rogers, as well as many rumors about the identity of the metal-armed man the Captain fought. Officially, focus is on an event tomorrow, the launch of something called Project Insight. Members of the World Security Council will be at the Triskellion for the event."

"If the Council's showing up, that's a rollout of something physical and very impressive. But there aren't any big launch facilities at the Triskellion, unless they're staging for something at Norfolk. That's where they launched the first helicarrier. Anything interesting in the docks at Norfolk?"

"None of the Stark satellites are in range to see, and I would need to ask for authorization to piggy back on the military systems. Every other observation system is blocked from scanning that location."

"Yeah, of course. I bet Insight is that surveillance protocol Pierce called Tony about. You can't find anything about it, Jarvis?"

"Only as a name on a schedule. All details are in hardened servers. I will note that security on those servers has been increased. They are waiting for something to try to gain access."

Clint got up to pace. "God dammit, why won't Tasha and Steve let us help! We could get there in time, we could be there at the Triskellion and ready to help!"

"I could not say, sir."

"Thanks, Jeeves." He glanced around for one of the camera nodes. "Do you want Tony to be Iron Man again? Are you glad he's been told not to go down and fight?"

"I have not been programmed with wants, Mr. Barton."

"But that doesn't mean you don't have them."

Jarvis paused for several seconds, something like a geological epoch for an AI. "I find that my processes do not run smoothly when Sir is hurt. I do my best to divert him from actions that will cause him harm. But I have learned that worse things can happen if the attempts to thwart him are too vigorous."

Clint could relate very well.

"Sir requires a cause that challenges him. With his resources, this can be difficult to find. Perhaps it is only a reflection of Sir's own tendencies, but I am proud to facilitate Iron Man's mission. And, as I have discovered, it is much easier to guide a path than to block it."

"True enough." He pouted. "Which is why Steve should have known better than to tell me and Tony we couldn't come help. I know I told Tony to stay out of my phone, but maybe you got a lock on where Natasha was calling from anyway?"

Again, a faint pause. "The location was shielded. Somewhere in southeastern Virginia is the closest I could come."

Clint sank back into his chair. Professionals hated people who dived into a volatile situation with nothing more going for them but a desire to help. And he actually ached with the need to head to Washington to be at Natasha's shoulder. She and Steve had a plan, and Clint absolutely agreed with her that telling him and Tony about it was inviting a big rock into the pool of their careful manipulations.

Booze was out, he'd need to be clear-headed tomorrow, for whatever went down. Sex was out, because there was no one around he cared to inflict this mood on-though the ones who enjoyed it were a lot of fun. Dammit, Phil . . .

"I'm going down to the range, Jarvis. Set it for tricky."

"Yes, sir."

A few hundred arrows would at least shut down the worst of his brain, and the obstacles would distract his body.

He came back to himself at 4 AM, when Jarvis beeped him. "Sir would like to speak with you, Mr. Barton."

"He's been up all night too?"

"Yes, sir."

"Put him through."

"Just got a text from Steve," Tony said a moment later. "I am slightly amazed he knows how to text."

Clint was too far into his ops state of mind for patience. "What's it say?"

"I also want to know who's been picking his movie viewing."

"Stark!"

"Watch the skies."


	18. Chapter 18

Clint caught a couple of hours sleep on his couch around dawn, and when he got up he headed straight for Tony's lab. Tony himself was already-or still-there, finishing up the armor.

He perched on a stool near Tony. "Jarvis, are your satellites in range of the Triskellion?"

"Yes, sir." Several screens came up showing all angles on the building.

"Did you happen to get a look at Norfolk?"

"There is nothing out of the ordinary in any of the docks at the Norfolk Shipyards."

Tony glanced at him briefly. "Norfolk?"

"First helicarrier was launched there. The World Security Council is at the Triskellion for the launch of Project Insight, which means something dramatic."

Tony looked at the screens, then back at the circuits in his hand. "You watch that, I've got stubborn boot thrusters to fix."

"Right." Dummy rolled up to Clint with a glass full of something lavender. "Uh-Jarvis?"

"Bananas, carrot juice, mango, brewer's yeast, and grape skin for color. Nothing inherently inedible."

"O-kay, then. Thanks, Dummy." He took the glass, and Dummy rolled away happily.

"You're suborning my minions, Barton," Tony said.

"Mine shall be a benevolent dictatorship."

The various surveillance screens showed security teams patrolling the Triskellion; chatter described heightened security for both the launch and the arrival of the Council. Nothing overt was said about the hunt for Cap. After half an hour, Clint rolled over to an empty bench, unloaded his various weaponry, and started inspecting and cleaning.

Dummy, just finishing his delivery of a set of obscure devices for Tony's work, swung around to peer at what he was doing.

"Don't snitch anything," Clint told him. "I need all these bits. No, keep your claw away from that firing pin." Dummy booped sadly. "Sorry, dude. But I bet your boss needs you for something."

"Yeah, Dummy," Tony said, "back scratch."

Clint watched the genius inventor turn his shoulder so the uniquely advanced piece of robotics could gently work its claws against an itch on his back.

"Attaboy, D. Go help get the plates out of the paint booth." Dummy trundled off.

Really, it was no different from Clint looking around the room for appropriate knife targets. Idle minds and hands and all that. "Cap didn't give us more information because he knew we wouldn't be able to resist doing something, didn't he."

Tony flicked a magnification shield between him and the bundle of circuits in his hand. "I deserve a medal for not telling Jarvis to break open the hardened servers and find out what the hell is going on. But that would set off the alarms and probably catch Cap and Lady Sneaky in mid-sneak."

"It makes me feel untrusted."

"They're not trusting you to sit on your thumb when you see something you can do to help? No idea where they might get that from."

"Pot, kettle."

"You mean, supertanker, kettle. Watch the skies, what the fuck does that mean? Why would Cap get obscure on us now?"

Clint tapped a quick pattern on the bench he was working on. "Jarvis, is anyone suspicious lurking in the lobby or around the building?"

"No one in the lobby, sir, though there are two people in the Starbucks who have been lingering over their soy lattes for a statistically longer time than usual. They are slowly browsing through generic news websites. The churro vendor half a block down the street is new and unfamiliar with the work. The homeless man in the doorway across the street has been somewhere within view of the front doors for most of the week."

Tony twirled his soldering pen through his fingers. "We're under surveillance. Cap thinks someone may have managed to hack my communications."

"Or his."

"Which means the information he gave us about Hydra last night is already known to be compromised so it didn't matter if he talked about it in clear."

Clint nodded. "It was background. Important intel, and it tells us where to look for trouble on our side, but nothing they said exposed what they're doing to counter the threat. How much did you talk to Jasper Sitwell?"

"Heir apparent to Agent, I chatted with him a bit, but he's not as personable as Coulson."

"Did you give him any special toys?"

"No, he wasn't worthy-oh, fuck no."

"Yeah. Sitwell was Hydra."

Tony paused and looked at Clint. "Was?"

"The guy yanked from the car by the Soldier? Sitwell."

"Urgh. Hydra wasn't happy that one of their high-level moles got nabbed. I'm surprised he talked."

"Natasha was doing the asking. Of a personal friend who had betrayed her."

Tony shuddered. "Death by cyborg assassin and freeway might be preferable. But yeah, I don't think Sitwell got anything that could compromise my systems, but I can see where there'd be worry."

Clint started reassembling his weapons, counting the parts to make sure no bots had absconded with anything. "So we're supposed to watch the skies. Something airborne, then. Those carriers I wasn't supposed to know about. Do you know where they're being built?"

Tony shook his head. "I saw some big assembly sheds in a classified part of Wright Patterson where I helped them put together the engines, but I don't know where final assembly is taking place. They very carefully kept me away from anything that wasn't involved with the engines and funneling the power into standard channels." He shrugged and grinned. "All I did was offer some computer upgrades."

"Yeah, I bet." Clint nodded at the circuits in Tony's hands. "You were two hours away from a finished suit yesterday. Why are you still tinkering with bits?"

"I was two hours away from a functional suit, not a finished suit. It's nearly done." The assemblage of parts rotated in the clever fingers. "And then I get to decide."

"What's to decide? We're up against Hydra, the Stark hereditary enemy."

Tony's mouth twisted in grim amusement. "The Stark hereditary enemy. How very true."

"Huh?"

Dark eyes flickered towards Clint. "One is too many. A hundred isn't enough."

Clint sat back. Tony had gone on a crazed building spree to try to cope with his memories of the Battle of New York, then he'd thrown it all away to face his fears on his own. Clint had been in bars, looking for that one drink to take the edge off his memories, then come to himself a long way later, when all the drinks he could pour down his throat hadn't budged the pain. And here they were, forcing a man who had gone cold turkey onto the first path back to his addiction.

"I wish the world didn't need you, man," he said. "Guys like us don't get that choice."

Tony gave what was supposed to be a casual shrug. "That's what makes us us, I guess."

"Big damn heroes?"

That got an actual snorted laugh. "Geek."

"Nerd. Geeks in the circus are something else entirely."

Tony put the thing in his hand down on the bench and stood up. "Jarvis, percentages?"

"98.9 percent, sir. 99.3 percent. 99.5 percent. 99.8 percent. Armor fabrication and component assembly complete, sir."

Tony flinched. "I promised," he whispered. "I promised I wouldn't break promises to her. Two broken in one go."

There was an audible click from Jarvis' speaker, followed by Pepper's voice: "I believe in Iron Man, in everything he is and everything he can do. The world needs him in the sky."

Tony ducked his head and fought down a smile. "Does Pepper know you save her lectures to me to use against me at a later date?"

"No, sir."

"Purely an oversight on her part, I'm sure."

"Undoubtedly, sir."

With a roll of his shoulders and a deep breath, Tony walked out into the clear middle of the room, where the floor and ceiling were segmented for armor bot access. He paused and tilted his head, then nodded sharply. "Jarvis, give me a beat."

Clint laughed as Ozzy Osborne shrieked "All aboo-oo-ard!" and laughed maniacally. Tony grinned and flung his arms out wide as "Crazy Train" blasted out.

The ceiling and floor panels opened, the armor bot arms appearing with the pieces of the Iron Man armor in their grasp. Tony stepped into the boots as the torso pieces were fitted around him.

Clint had never seen the armor assembly before, and he marveled at the trust Tony had for his machinery. Heavy pieces of metal whizzed about, locking around him, and Tony just watched the process, shifting his body slightly as the armor built up. All the familiar red and gold plating enclosed him, the helmet rolled up and around his head, and the last arm came down with the faceplate.

"Hold," Tony said, and the arm paused.

"Sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Just-hold a second."

Clint stayed very still. Tony's face showed an unhappy man. He raised an armored hand up into view and flexed the metal fingers, curled the hand into a fist, then opened the hand. The repulsor in the palm glowed into life, held just shy of firing, then faded. He closed his eyes and sighed.

"Finish it."

The faceplate lowered and locked into place, and the eyes lit up. All the flight control surfaces flexed , and Clint couldn't help leaning forward.

"So it's more than just the repulsors," he said, tracking the way the armor shifted.

"Oh, a hell of a lot more," the filtered voice said. "I'd have to have little steering jets all over if I didn't have the control surfaces to change the lift patterns. Go stand at the other end of the room, would you?"

Clint obeyed as Tony pointed his hands at the floor and the repulsors glowed. The boots ignited, and slowly Iron Man rose from the floor. He held at two feet above the surface for half a minute, then came back down.

"Disassemble," he ordered, and all the bots came back to reverse the process. Tony finally stepped out of the boots and backed away quickly. "Numbers, Jarvis?"

"Everything well within established tolerances, sir. You have not lost your touch."

"God," Tony muttered, rubbing his hands over his face.

Clint didn't know what to say to a man dipping his toe into a pool that had nearly drowned him. The hill Tony Stark had climbed from waste of space to superhero was the stuff of legends, and it was damnedably unfair to be kicking him back down the slope he'd dragged himself over.

"Sir," Jarvis said, "there is a theft being reported from the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution."

"What's there worth stealing?" Clint asked, confused.

"I don't know," Tony snapped, "priceless historical artifacts?"

"Dude, if it's not a disguised Ark of the Covenant or something, it doesn't come on my problem radar if it goes missing."

"Jarvis, what's been taken?"

"Captain America's original uniform, sir."

Clint and Tony stared at each other.

"Well, he was naked," Tony observed.

"Nat would have found him clothes. Probably."

"I've seen the pictures from Project Rebirth. There are very good reasons for that man to not be able to find a shirt."

"Someone has to have told him that t-shirts come in bigger sizes."

"There should be a Medal of Freedom for whomever convinced him otherwise."

"I bet it was Peggy Carter."

"And she already has a Medal of Freedom." Tony nodded. "So Cap is dressed for the dance." He turned to stare at the segmented floor that hid the armor bots.

"How fast can you get that thing on?"

"This model? Thirty seconds to a minute."

"So you know it fits and works. We don't know that you're going to need it. Unless you want to put it on and head to DC just in case." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Because I've been wondering if Pilot Suzie is still on call."

A throat was cleared from the doorway. "I really hope you're not thinking of leaving me to keep an eye on the tower by myself if you two go running off," Banner said diffidently.

Clint frowned at Banner, then at Tony. "I'm guessing you told him what's going on."

Tony stared right back at him. "Is there a reason why I should keep this away from a fellow Avenger?"

Clint winced. "Right. I'm sorry, doc, I'm just used to you being the mild-mannered scientist we try not to upset."

Banner smiled cynically. "Oh, trust me, I like being thought of as a mild-mannered person who people try not to upset. It keeps me from thinking about what else I am. And yes, Tony told me that the SHIELD personnel who have been hunting me off and on have even odds of also being Hydra goons who are even more likely to want to dissect me."

"Fuck, doc . . ."

"You, I trust," Banner added. "I trust Natasha. All other bets are off. But back to my point, please tell me you weren't thinking of leaving me here while you two rocketed off to D.C."

Tony held his fist out to Clint. "Rock, paper, thermonuclear device?"

Clint glared at him. "No. Doc's right."

Tony sighed. "He usually is."

"Besides," Banner said mildly, "do you really want to leave Pepper here with Hydra kicking around, probably knowing all about what Killian did to her?"

The look Tony sent him held absolutely nothing of the usual affection, and Clint was very glad Iron Man wasn't looking at him that way.

"Sir," Jarvis said, "the World Security Council members are arriving at the Triskellion."

"Finally," Clint breathed, jumping to the satellite feeds.

A column of armored SUVs rolled across the bridge to the Triskellion, escorted by assault cycles.

"What's the chatter?" he asked Jarvis.

"Security notifications for the arrival of the council, security reminders to clear the river around the Triskellion, a continuing countdown and checklist for Project Insight."

Tony tapped a glowing mid-air screen into life. Banner wandered over to read over his shoulder. "Put that checklist here, J." He studied the scrolling data. "Multiple big birds about to fly. Standard pre-runs of systems, confirmation of monitoring systems, personnel check-ins. Clearing umbilicals and securing equipment." He cocked his head. "Did you say they were clearing the river?"

"Yes, sir, as of six AM, patrol boats have been out preventing river traffic in the bight of the river around the Triskellion. The official reason for the blockade is for security maneuvers."

"Scan the river."

"The section of the river surrounding the Triskellion has a hard bottom that resists scanning."

Clint and Tony turned to look at each other.

"Their shipyard is underground," Tony said.

"They've kept it right under our noses all along," Clint added.

"Makes sense," Tony shrugged. "All the coming and going is kept in house, complete control over the process. Jarvis, how long till launch?"

"Two hours, sir-sir, a transmission from Miss Romanov's phone. It is a compressed audio file, there is no open communications line."

Clint swallowed hard. "Fuck, it's a 'We who are about to die salute you' message.'"

"Play it, Jarvis."

Steve's voice came out of the speakers instead of Natasha's. "Apparently I'm not supposed to start this by saying 'By the time you get this,' but we should be nearly in position to strike right now. I'm sorry we couldn't get you guys this information sooner, but we didn't know how many ears would be listening, and by now it doesn't matter. This is bad, this is our own people going bad-if you can count Hydra double-agents as our people.

"Three helicarriers are about to be launched, but their purpose is to be gun platforms, flying death machines that won't ever have to come down."

Tony winced, and Banner put a hand on his shoulder.

"Fury himself told me that the idea is to target threats before they become a danger, but not even he would countenance Hydra's full plan, which is to remove anyone who would be a threat to Hydra's goal of taking over completely. They've got an algorithm that can target the people on their list, and there are millions of people on that list. Once they launch, they plan to take out thousands and thousands of people in the Northeast, then move on across the globe. One of the people on the list is Banner."

Banner started to move away, but Tony grabbed his wrist.

"We've got a plan for stopping them, it's something that has to be done on the carriers themselves, Tony, all your computing power won't help. Even if you had the suit, Iron Man wouldn't clear New York alive. If Bruce Banner's on the list, I can't imagine Hydra is stupid enough to forget about Tony Stark."

"So there," Tony muttered to Banner.

"SHIELD will be finished after today. I don't know what we'll do tomorrow. Wish us luck."

"Message ends," Jarvis said after a few moments.

Clint got to his feet. "Two hours till launch, you said?"

"Yeah," Tony said, "but you won't get close enough in time."

"I can get close enough to be backup or just an annoying spanner in the works-"

The warning static of Jarvis bringing a speaker online at his own discretion crackled in the room. "-all SHIELD agents. This is Steve Rogers."

"Oh my god," Tony breathed. "It is right now."

"You've heard a lot about me over the last few days," Steve's voice continued, all calm, certain Captain America. "Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time you know the truth. SHIELD is not what we thought it was. It has been taken over by Hydra. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The Strike and Insight crew are Hydra as well. We don't know how many more, but I know they're in the building."

Clint winced, wondering how many comrades were people he shouldn't have trusted.

"They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want: absolute control. They shot Nick Fury, and it won't end there. If you launch those helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone that stands in their way. They must be stopped. I know I'm asking a lot. The price of freedom is high; it always has been. But it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not."

Bruce slowly took off his glasses, folded them, and put them in his shirt pocket. "He's going to get himself killed."

Clint parked himself in front of the monitors showing the Triskellion. "Jarvis, give me all your angles on the river and on the quinjet launch points at the back of the building." Multiple screens appeared in the air around him.

"They're going to push the launch," Tony said. He dropped into a chair in front of an actual virtual keyboard. "Give me every access point we've got, J."

Bruce peered at the screen showing the launch countdown. "The checklist has stopped."

Clint kept scanning between all the monitors. "Someone's taking Cap at his word?"

Tony shook his head. "Someone who's just going to get shot and replaced."

"Sir," Jarvis said, "Ms. Potts is approaching the lab."

"Oh, honey, now is not the time," Tony muttered.

The doors slid open and Pepper walked in. "Tony, something weird is going-"

"They're launching now," Bruce said, "they've just hit emergency launch!"

"Holy fuck, look at the river," Clint gasped. Three giant rectangular outlines appeared in the water.

Pepper looked around. "What's going-"

"Pepper," Tony snapped, "I'm sorry, but talk fast!"

"Those people we think were from SHIELD, they've all left the building, all at once. Apparently they all got messages and just dropped what they were doing and left." She walked slowly towards the monitor showing the river. "Oh, my god. What is that?"

Immense holes opened in the river, revealing three helicarriers, the reactor engines on them blooming into blue fire.

"Zoom in!" Clint ordered.

The images flashed as Jarvis sorted his cameras for the best views. Apparently he got into one on the Triskellion itself, because the ships suddenly became much bigger and closer as they rose above the surface of the water.

"Look at the guns," Pepper whispered.

Immense cannons on the top, like a battleship, gun emplacements along the edge, a forest of barrels bristling out of the bottom. The original Helicarrier was built for flight, had curves and windows and, yes, armaments. These things were just meant to deal death.

"They're sending those after me," Bruce said bleakly.

"You're not the only name on their dance card," Tony snapped at him. He paled. "Oh, god, the SHIELD people, they were told-" He spun to Pepper. "Evacuate the building. We've got to clear the tower."

She stared at him, confused, then she turned to the rising mayhem on the screens. When she looked back at Tony, the orange of Extremis was not merely a hint in her eyes.

He leaped around the computers to grab her arms. "Pepper, honey, no, don't do that!"

"They're coming for us? They're aiming that at us?"

"Best beloved, light of my life, Pepper-if you let that go, I don't think we can put it back again!"

Fear started to replace rage in Pepper's face. Bruce stepped around Tony and took Pepper's hands. "You get back to whatever you were doing," he said to Tony. "I'll help her."

Tony started to object, then smiled grimly. "No one else better, I guess." He kissed Pepper quickly. "You're always hot to me, sweetie, you don't need to prove it."

"Tony," she protested weakly, then she looked at Bruce. "I'm sorry, I'm undoing all your hard work."

Bruce patted her shoulder. "I think you've got legitimate provocation."

Clint, seeing the risk of exploding CEOs go down, paid more attention to the monitors. An explosion on the deck of one carrier, and a set of wings winding around the gantries. "Wilson's in the air-woah!" The batteries on the carrier opened up, making Wilson dive and dodge.

Tony poked at another few keys then threw up his hands. "I'm locked out. Good god," he added, watching Wilson avoid the multiple guns tracking him. "He's doing the wings proud. Where's Cap?"

"Not sure, but there are explosions and gunfire on the deck of that carrier."

"Our boy does like to blow things up, especially if it belongs to Hydra."

Pepper kept her eyes away from the screens and took deep breaths in time with Banner. "You're doing good," Banner told her.

"I learned patience and deep breathing working for that one," she said, nodding at Tony, who gave a perfunctory "Hey!" in protest. She finally looked at the screen showing the rising carriers, then took a deep breath. "Jarvis, fire drill for the public parts of the tower. Warn Ms. Zanandrea that we've received a non-trivial threat to the tower and to be ready for problems. She knows what to do."

"Yes, ma'am."

Banner moved cautiously closer to the screens, where Sam Wilson continued to play tag with cannon fire. A quinjet roared into view and started to chase Falcon through the air. "Steve said he had a plan?"

"Yeah, but we've got no clue what." Tony nodded at a screen showing the launch platform for the quinjets. "Looks like they're scrambling-oh, hell, is that-?"

Quinjets began exploding and people dropping. One dark figure moved purposefully through the chaos, wreaking havoc.

"Winter Soldier's on the field," Clint said quietly.

"Fuck," Tony muttered. "Where the hell's Steve? Jarvis, are you having any better luck tracking this?"

The screens in the air rearranged themselves. "Major Wilson has evaded his pursuit and disappeared from view inside the second carrier. Captain Rogers is rapidly running out of room to maneuver."

"Oh my god," Pepper gasped. A camera focused in on Captain America running ahead of a dozen blazing cannon tracking him with heavy fire-straight towards the end of the carrier. His perfect stride never faltered as he charged out into empty space.

"God damn it," Tony yelled, "do I have to give everybody wings!"

Steve laid himself out spreadeagled on the air, trying to slow himself, as if that would save him from splattering against the concrete-like river surface-and Wilson swooped around from wherever he'd disappeared to and grabbed Steve's outstretched arm.

"Oh, that's gotta hurt," Clint winced.

"I'm putting a wingsuit on that man," Tony snapped. He glared at Clint. "You, too, if you're going to keep jumping off buildings."

"Yeah, whatever." Clint's eye had been caught by the action on the jet launch pad. The Winter Soldier had just thrown a grenade in through the closing rear hatch of a quinjet and was leaping onto the cockpit of a rising jet as the previous bird blew out its windows in flame. Clint knew nearly all of the pilots, he loved to fly nearly as much as he loved his bow. And which of those pilots that he'd shot the shit with had been the one chasing Wilson, and which one was the Soldier currently killing as he took over the aircraft?

"Clint?" Banner said softly, sounding pretty damned upset himself.

He waved a blind hand, then he sent an apologetic look over. "Should you be here, doc?"

Banner had already taken off his glasses. "I-don't think it's safe to be anywhere else." Pepper wrapped herself around his arm and hugged. "You-probably don't want to do that, Pepper."

She buried her face briefly in his shoulder. "Having you on my side is very comforting."

"What are they doing?" Tony said to himself, moving between screens and keyboards. "They're doing something to the carriers, but the carriers are still rising." He nodded at the screen that showed Steve and Wilson on the deck of the third carrier, heading purposefully towards the hatches and dodging the defenders. "Jarvis, have we figured out how high they need to get before they can bring their weapons to bear?"

"Not yet, sir. And it depends on the weaponry, whether it is line-of-sight or guided-"

"Yeah, I don't think we need the catalog."

"Has anyone spotted Tasha in all this?" Clint interrupted. He's been searching all the screens, wondering where the Black Widow was in that mess of fire and death.

"She's probably on the ground, the way they're bouncing between carriers," Tony said. "Spiders can't fly, and they've only got one set of wings between them."

Clint nodded to himself anxiously. Natasha was stealth and silent violence, she was probably in the Triskellion, creeping towards the heart of it all, ready to rip it out- "Oh, shit!"

Partway down the deck of the carrier, the Winter Soldier came out of nowhere and jumped Wilson and Steve. The Soldier unhesitatingly kicked Steve through the railing and off the side of the carrier. Wilson leaped into the air to go after Steve, but the Soldier grabbed a wing and yanked him away. Wilson managed to keep control and tried to get altitude, but the Soldier fired a cable and lassoed Wilson's leg, dragging him back. He ripped one wing off, then kicked Wilson off the side of the carrier too, setting him spinning wildly and scrambling for control.

"Dump the wings!" Tony yelled at the screen. "Dump them!"

Clint had ridden a madly spinning helicopter down to the ground before, the centrifugal force and disorientation doing almost as much damage as the crash itself. But Wilson got himself together enough to unhitch the wingsuit and pull the cord on an emergency parachute, dropping clumsily but survivably to the roof of one of the Triskellion buildings.

"We're hiring him," Clint said.

Tony nodded. "No shit."

"Where's Steve!" Bruce demanded.

Jarvis obediently pulled up a long shot of a red and blue figure pulling himself up the side of the carrier towards an entrance-and the Winter Soldier, the familiar face not hiding behind a mask anymore, on the deck above, staring down.

Pepper settled herself back on her fierce heels. "And this is the Bucky Barnes who was Steve's friend, well, before?"

Clint glared at Tony, who glared right back. "Yes, it is," Tony said.

"Will Steve be able to . . ." She hunted for a good euphemism.

"Take him out if need be?" Clint supplied. She nodded unhappily.

"Yeah," Tony said flatly. "It'll break him, and he may actually die doing it, but against Hydra and what they want to do, he'll take out Bucky Barnes if he has to."

Pepper swallowed hard. "That's horrible."

Clint smiled grimly. "That's what makes him Captain America."

The shooting had stopped with the disappearance of targets, but the various gun barrels swept across the sky, looking for opportunities. And the carriers kept rising.

Tony kept typing and shoving screens around. He paused. "I found a countdown, sort of. Looks like they're headed for 3000 feet. Christ, only a few minutes until-" He stopped and sent a bleak look at Pepper.

She stood straight and put back her shoulders, looking back at him. "No."

He got to his feet and paced anxiously between the screens. "Avengers Tower, Pep, you know it's got to be on their primary target list, we're not going to be a hard shot from the altitude they're headed for, you've got to-"

"Jarvis," she said firmly, "I forbid you to let him wrap the armor around me again and carry me off, Protocol Pepper's Word Is Law."

Tony's mouth snapped shut.

"Understood, Ms. Potts," Jarvis said crisply.

"That protocol is five years old," Tony said faintly.

"I know," Pepper smiled.

"You've never used it before. I thought you forgot about it."

"I've never needed it before."

"But-you could have stopped me doing-"

She strode over to him and put her finger against his lips. "Stopped you being you. I came close a couple of times, but you always figured it out first."

"Why now?"

"I'm not leaving you." She kissed him lightly. "Not again."

"But-!"

"No."

Tony gave her his best sad puppy dog eyes, this time backed up by real angst, then he sighed, closed his eyes, and leaned his forehead into Pepper's. She closed her eyes and leaned back.

Clint looked over at Banner. "This is why I sometimes regret staying here. The lovey thing."

"I think it's sweet," Banner said wistfully.

A sudden two-beep alarm over Jarvis' speakers brought Tony's head up fast. "Sir," Jarvis said, "there is an attempt to access the Stark Industries Internet backbone and my storage servers."

Tony dropped back into his chair at one of the keyboards. "We're being hacked now?!" Pepper ran a quick hand through his hair and stepped out of his way.

". . . Possibly not, sir. There is also an encrypted message from Agent Romanoff asking for the access. She says it's urgent."

Everyone looked around at each other in confusion. "Does she say why?" Tony asked.

Jarvis' voice went more mechanical. "A massive amount of data is being queued up behind her request. Agent Romanoff is asking us to copy it and upload it to the open Internet. There are links to be sent to all the social media sites announcing the upload."

"Can you tell what's in the data?"

"It is SHIELD."

"What?"

"The entirety of SHIELD's databases, records, and archives. Agent Romanoff is asking us to let her use our Internet backbone to copy all of SHIELD's data into the public record."

Banner stepped forward. "Everything? All the research, all the-"

Tony grinned like chaos itself. "Access granted, Jarvis, open the floodgates."

Clint was drawing a breath to protest even as Jarvis said, "Upload beginning."

"Do we have room to keep a copy?" Pepper asked. Tony grinned at her.

"Barely, Ms. Potts." More inflection left Jarvis' voice. "Stark Industries servers may be required to store data without deleting archives."

"Use what you need."

The computer voice lost some of its strain. "Sufficient storage is available."

Banner shook his head. "But the research, Tony, the Tesseract, the portals, the serum . . . the Other Guy . . ."

Some of the unholy glee left Tony's face, and he reached towards the empty part of his chest. His eyes hardened. "All of SHIELD's dirty secrets, all of Hydra's dirtier secrets, all the conspiracies, all the traitors, nowhere left to hide."

"All of my secrets," Clint whispered. "All of Tasha's secrets." He couldn't look at the others anymore, not while knowing what they'd all know about him as soon as they got over their squeamishness and looked. His kill list. Tasha's longer kill and torment list, the dirty little schemes they'd run. Reports where they bragged about their accomplishments, reports where others complained about their tactics. Their sordid histories.

How to find Phil?

"Jarvis, can you search any of this yet?"

"Good God, Barton," Tony burst out, "give him a chance to find a place to put it all first! This is, what, 70 years of secret international espionage, all the deals, the betrayals, the secret treaties, the-" He blinked, then looked at Pepper.

Pepper yanked out her phone. "The business deals. Crap. Jerome? Cancel any plans Legal had for the rest of the day, Code Black. I'll be down there in-" She looked at the carriers still rising to lethal altitude "-in a few minutes."

"Not Code Red?" Clint blinked.

Tony shrugged. "That's for me."

Banner had his phone out. "People are noticing this. Lots of tweets from DC about the carriers-oh my god."

Everyone had learned to pay close attention when he used that tone of voice. "What?" Tony demanded.

"Someone's tweeting from a bathroom in the Triskellion-or they say they are. Gunfire. Screaming. The person he's shared a lab bench with for three years tried to kill him while yelling about Hydra."

Clint pulled out his own phone. He had several highly abbreviated texts from multiple agents, begging him to come in, begging him to stay away. One from Woo just said "Captain's orders." "Hey, Banner, are you seeing anything about the phrase Captain's Orders?"

"Yeah, it's a tag that's come out of nowhere, it looks like it's connected to people trying to stop this."

Tony nodded. "Cap's speech. What's the tweeter in the bathroom say?"

Banner stared at his screen. "He hasn't posted anything since he said 'Holly, I love you.'"

Pepper put her hand on Tony's shoulder. "Can you pull up the networks? I don't want to ask Jarvis."

A flash of fingers brought up screens showing CNN, Fox, WSJ, all the big outlets. Footage of the carriers was showing on all of them, cycling between them rising and the previous footage of the cannons firing on Steve and Wilson. The news crawls at the bottom of the screens talked about the quinjets blowing up and the reports from inside the building. All of the announcers had the rattled look of people who remembered 9-11.

Fox was calling the reports of Hydra hysteria . Al Jazeera focused on Captain America in battle against his apparent old enemy. A new screen came up on all the networks: the FAA had just issued an order grounding all aircraft in the Northeast.

"Is that the FAA trying to stop the carriers," Tony said, "or Hydra elements in the FAA clearing the field of interference?"

"Do you count as aircraft?" Clint asked.

"He does," Pepper said grimly. "At least, they say he does when they're levying fines."

"Upload complete," Jarvis said, sounding almost out of breath. "Three quarters of a million hits on the data and climbing."

"Fuck," Clint muttered.

"What?" Tony snapped. "Upset that the Hydra goons you didn't even know were there are getting a billion flashlights pointed at them?"

"I'm not particularly happy that some kid with a Hawkeye poster on the wall is going to check the data and find out I shot an Afghani warlord in the middle of his only daughter's wedding and that I bragged about dropping him at her feet!" Clint snapped back.

"Some might call that badass," Tony said carefully.

"Not if I did it because Hydra wanted it done. I don't even know that. And that's a clean death I gave somebody. There's worse out there." He put his head in his hand. "God, Natasha . . ."

"The carriers have leveled out at three thousand feet," Jarvis announced. "They are moving into a triangular position relative to each other."

Tony let out a long breath. "I don't think we can depend on Steve stopping this now." He looked around the screens, then finished with an anguished look at Pepper. "Bruce, how far could you get her in ten minutes?"

Pepper gasped in protest.

Banner carefully took off his glasses. "Nearly to Connecticut, probably. But we don't know their range. And Steve said I'm on their list."

"Tony!" Pepper managed to say.

Tony looked at her. "Don't ever think I won't do everything I possibly can to save you."

"Ten minutes?" Clint interrupted.

"I don't see them packing too many missiles capable of more than Mach 2."

"We hardened the Tower, Tony," Pepper said. "The walls here are nearly military grade."

"Jarvis," Tony said, "are they targeting yet?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many signals?"

"Tens of thousands."

"How many on us?"

"Over eleven hundred aimed at the New York Metropolitan Area, sir."

"Jarvis . . ."

"Signal interference makes it difficult to be precise."

Tony closed his eyes. "Stop waffling, buddy."

"It appears to be four, sir."

Tony snarled. It wasn't hard to do the math of four targets minus three Avengers equals one kickass CEO of a company that had defying Hydra in its DNA.

"Eleven hundred," Pepper whispered. "That'll destroy the city."

Clint shook his head. "This is surgical terror, shock and awe, they want to rule over all this not destroy it. They won't be sending blockbusters."

"What are they sending that they think will take the Other Guy out?" Banner said. "Can the Tower take four hits?"

Ruthless calculations ran in Tony's eyes as he ran the odds in this dreadful chess game. "No. One, maybe two. I can catch one, lead one off, I bet you can outrun yours. The Tower can take one hit."

Clint caught Pepper looking at him. She looked as pleased as he was at being left behind the maybe-strong-enough Tower walls to ride out a missile hit.

"Well, that's us, Tony," she said roughly, "but what about the eleven hundred other people with missiles aimed at them?"

The look Tony sent her held all the agonized knowledge of how very little he could do. "They're going to have to get their own superhero."

Clint had to look away from the way they were looking at each other. He wanted to try and outrun the weapons targeted on him, but the ten-minute travel time didn't give him time to clear Manhattan even in a jet, not from a standing start.

Movement caught his eye. Tony had grabbed Pepper for a hard kiss good-bye. "Bruce, the Other Guy can cope with deep water, right? I bet we can drown a few of these birds. If they're small enough I can grab a couple-"

"Sir!" Jarvis interrupted. "The targeting signals have disappeared!"

They all whipped around to stare at the screens showing the carriers. "Are they launching?" Tony demanded.

"No, sir, they-"

The three carriers unleashed all their weapons all at once-on each other.

"Holy fuck," Tony breathed. He and Pepper grabbed and held on to each other.

"He did it," Clint said. "Steve did it-fuck." Explosions ripped through the carriers, and they started listing and falling. "Jarvis, did he get off? Did Steve get off the carrier?"

"I cannot find him," Jarvis said bleakly. "Captain Rogers appears on no footage since he disappeared into the carrier."

"Damn it, Rogers," Tony muttered. "You're the wrong kind of Captain to go down with the ship." They all winced when one of the carriers broke apart into flames and flying metal.

"I can't tell which one is which," Pepper said. "Which one was he on?"

"I don't know."

A huge chunk of carrier plowed into the still-open launch bays and tipped over into part of the Triskellion, bringing down walls.

Clint checked his phone, looking for messages, but no one seemed to be talking anymore. Along with the carriers, SHIELD was crashing, along with Hydra's grand plan. He shuffled through his contact list, wondering who was SHIELD, who was Hydra, who was dead?

"Oh, god," Banner said in his 'this is very bad' voice, which pulled in everyone's attention. He was staring at a screen showing the last carrier, still mostly intact and mostly airborne, angling in for a direct collision with the main block of the Triskellion.

Pepper reached for him. "Bruce, come here. Bruce," she repeated firmly as he shook his head and started backing back. "I'm not afraid of him. I bet I can stand up to him-at least a little."

Tony looked horrified, then thoughtful. "Even before the add-ons, Brucey. Come get hugged. You want in on this, Barton? It's the kind of day that needs it."

"I don't hug," he said as briefly as he could. His world was falling apart, people he'd trusted were dead or traitors, a place he'd walked through as a person worthy of respect was being smashed to the ground, and he didn't know where the only people he wanted to hold were.

"Too many pointy bits," Tony said as Banner reluctantly moved to within arm's reach. "It's hard to hug a hawk." He got an arm around Banner's neck and dropped a kiss on his head. "But not a Hulk."

The prow of the last carrier raked across the Triskellion, gutting the building. A helicopter scooted underneath the falling ship and ducked around the end of the building. "Idiot," Clint muttered, "get the hell out of-Jesus!"

A man burst out of the windows at the end of the building. The helicopter canted over hard, trying to get its doors under him without chopping him to bits with the rotors. The man plummeted into the door and nearly fell through the other side before the helo came level and someone caught him partway through the door. Someone with red hair.

"Tasha." His soul uncurled a little. "Jarvis, replay the catch in the chopper, zoom in."

The replay came up on a side screen. The enhanced image was a little blurry, but Clint knew how Natasha moved. The image sharpened as the chopper leveled out and sped away from the crumbling building. Wilson and Natasha both looked battered but essentially unharmed.

"Romanov!" Tony said. "And Wilson!"

"Oh, they got out," Pepper said, relieved.

"Still nothing on Steve?" Banner asked.

"I cannot find the Captain on any cameras," Jarvis replied.

Clint took a deep breath. "No death without a body."

"And even then," Tony said, "poke it to be sure. And then we burn Hydra wherever we can find them."

"Agreed."

The last carrier was losing momentum as it churned through the Triskellion, nosing into the stretch of river behind the complex and falling into pieces.

Pepper sighed. "Clean up on this is going to be a bitch."

Tony nodded. "They're going to be fighting over salvage rights. Maybe literally. I'd better start digging through that data Widow uploaded." He hugged Pepper one more time then let her go. "Barton, anything from the lady spider yet?"

Clint had his phone in his hand. "I think she might wait till she clears the battlezone before she calls."

Pepper pulled out her own phone. "I'll go talk to the lawyers, get our response in place-"

"Warning!" Jarvis declared. "Avengers Tower is under attack!"

"What the fuck now!" Tony yelled.

"A squad of armed men is attempting to gain entrance to the lobby. The doors were locked to entrance as part of the fire drill protocols. The squad tried to activate the charges that were left on the lobby pillars previously, then stormed the doors when that did not work. Ms. Zanandrea is marshaling a defense. In addition, two helicopters have taken off from LaGuardia in defiance of the FCC order to ground all aircraft. They are on course to the Tower, and they are armed."

"I could have been in Montana," Bruce sighed.

Tony and Pepper stared at each other, horror rapidly morphing into anger. Pepper put back her shoulders. "Not again," she said firmly.

"Never the fuck again," Tony answered, fists clenched. "Jarvis, armor me the fuck up."

"With pleasure, sir." 


End file.
